The Witcher
by Unlimited Blade Works
Summary: This world doesn't need a hero, it needs a professional.
1. Chapter 1

**The Witcher**

 **Chapter One: No Rest For The Wicked**

 **Authors Note-**

Hi! This is just something I worked on in my spare time for a little while. Tell me what you guys think and all that jazz but most of all just enjoy it and remember if you don't like what your reading then just hit that red X at the top of the screen and read something else, don't torture yourself on my behalf after all.

Any questions please PM me, I'm not usually that good at getting back to people but entitle it The Witcher: Question and I'll try my best to get back to you quickly.

If a question gets asked enough during reviews then I'll most likely post the answer in the authors note next chapter.

Have a nice time!

 **Story Start-**

Despite the fact that most people didn't believe him when he told them, Harry James Potter actually truly enjoyed his life. Being born from a pair of Wizarding parents, one a Pureblood and the other a Muggle Born, it was very much anticipated that he would become a wizard himself and enter Hogwarts, these dreams were 'sadly' crushed at the tender age of six months when a routine test showed that he had a far smaller than normal Magic Core, meaning that he was a Squib.

Not that being a Squib was always considered a bad thing. While Squibs didn't have enough power in their Magic Cores to perform more powerful and complex magics like Transfiguration, minor magics, Runes and Rituals were well within their reach as was Potions. In addition to that particular fact all Squibs were also born with a kind of personal one off ability, most people in the Wizarding world saw this as something that was left over by the magic of their parents, changing the Squib in some way that defied the norm.

Pureblood supremacists just said that it was another way that magic made them superior to muggles.

Some Squibs got essentially useless things, such as the ability to always know where magnetic north was.

Harry actually knew someone who could do that.

Others, like himself, hit the metaphorical Jackpot. While not having the power of magic like his parents, or younger brother and sister, Harry's body had been changed. More specifically his body had been enhanced, he could hit harder, run further, heal faster and was all around more durable than a normal human, even if he could never be a Wizard these days he considered it to be a pretty fair trade off all things considered.

A most Wizards were capable of turning a rat into a teacup. That was impressive in it's own way, he had the ability to casually lift around five hundred kilos on command. Ask whoever you wanted a slightly above average hight guy who didn't even look like a body-builder lifting that much weight was impressive.

In addition to that over all his body had been enhanced far past the human norm, if it had to do with the physical aspects of the body then Harry James Potter could do it better than just about anyone you cared to name.

There were dozens of opportunities for Squibs in the Wizarding World, most chose to go on to becoming Potion Makers/Masters or Clerks. An equal number became Tour Guides to historical magical sites or used whatever gift they had been give to help with their own job. Rumour had it that the ability of one Argus Filch, Hogwarts Caretaker, was actually to sense those with the intent to break the rules, which really would make him invaluable to the Hogwarts Staff considering how many children they had to watch over.

Then there were the more dangerous job opportunities, some Squibs with the right kind of abilities went on to become Dragon Handlers, usually those that were impervious to fire took that course. Others went to work security for places like Gringotts, the abilities for people that did that tended to be varied but never to be underestimated.

Then you had what was considered, largely, to be the most dangerous job a Squib could possibly take of the lot of them.

That of a Professional Witcher.

The length of time that Witcher had been a recognised term and job title in the Magical World pre-dated most forms of institutionalised government. Under different names and throughout history Witcher's could always be found, Squibs with unique and powerful enhancements that made them perfect for hunting down and killing the worst monsters and criminals that the Magical World had to offer.

Not that the Aurors did a bad job per-say but they were understaffed as were several other Ministry Departments that also dealt with things that throughout history had been the domain of Witcher's. As such even in modern times, where the job was on the decline, one could still find work with relative ease.

As Letho had once said, everyone can use the help of a professional.

Harry himself had jumped at the opportunity to be one when the offer had come through at ten years old. Not that it had been a direct offer to him so to speak, the offer was sent out to every Squib that was ten years of old and on the Ministry of Magic Register. It was up to the child, and their parents naturally, to decide if their abilities would be a good fit for the job and they wanted to under go the ten years of harsh, soul crushing training that was necessary to turn a child into a weapon of almost unparalleled lethality.

Convincing his parents, in particular Lilly Potter, to allow him to go had been an uphill battle to say the least. It had only been thanks to the timely intervention of one Albus Wulfric Brian Dumbledore that had allowed Harry out of the front door of his home and into the waiting arms of The Witcher Academy. While both Potter parents had been particularly against his inclusion into the ancient, and quite frequently fatal, trade, as any good parents would be, Dumbledore saw it from another angle.

The basic facts that he had laid before the elder Potter's had been simple, Squib or not Harry was a Potter. He was the older brother of The-Boy-Who-Lived and thus a target for Death Eaters and their sympathisers. The old man also noted that he would be a target for Voldemort himself should the wraith ever managed to obtain a body once more. Not that Harry had been told that second part until after he had graduated from his training at age twenty. Those two facts were not escapable and if he did not know how to defend himself properly against Wizards and others who may target him then Harry Potter would likely be as good as dead when Voldemort returned to power and considering the prophecy it was a question of when not if.

It had been that argument that had convinced James and Lilly Potter to allow their eldest child to attend The Witcher's Academy.

It also helped from Dumbledore's point of view that once his training had been completed Harry Potter would be a powerful warrior skilled in both anti-creature and anti-wizard combat as all Witcher's were. A valuable resource when one was fighting a war against an enemy that made use of both. Though Dumbledore's intentions had not been completely benevolent when he convinced Lilly and James Potter to send their eldest away Harry had thanked the man none the less when he had completed his training.

Harry liked his job, a job he would not have had if it were not for Albus Wulfric Brian Dumbledore and pure intentions or not the older man did still have his best interests at heart. While having another powerful soldier under his command when the war began once more would indeed be a boon to Dumbledore the fact of the matter was that it was not his main reason for convincing the Potter parents to send Harry off. He did that out of concern for the boys future well being and what may happen to him were Harry not ready to fend off attacks from people like the Death Eaters.

The powerful soldier part of the whole deal had just been a welcome bonus.

Harry had left home at ten years old to attend The Academy and the only reason he had left it's grounds for eight years, minus the two week break given once a year over Christmas, had been for survival training. According to Vesemir, the main instructor of the original forty Witcher Candidates, Witcher's used to be divided according to schools a different animal being used to represent each.

This practise however stopped in the early seventeen hundreds as Magical Society withdrew from Muggle and it was no longer as easy to gain the land necessary for a full sized Witcher's school. It was around this time when the idea of an Academy was put into practise, rather than having three to four smaller schools around each country Witcher's instead created a single academy in each that dealt with the recruitment and training of new Witcher's as well as acting as a kind of central hub for job requests and meetings in the country it was situated in.

Britain's Witcher Academy for example was located on the far coast of Wales, on an unplotable piece of land. The actual location in it's entirety was only known to Witcher's and the head of The Department For Magical Law Enforcement.

As for what was done to the apprentices, well there was actually a lot. The first year was just building the basics. Fitness, basic combat application with the stock weapons of a Witcher's arsenal including the silver sword and handgun, hand to hand combat, tracking, potions and monster identification. It also included a special diet designed to help improve muscle performance and build up a resistance to things like poison and toxins in general.

Second Year was a lot like the first but the exercise regime became even more intense and stressful. More classes were also added one began to learn how to use more weaponry such as rifles as well as how to observe human and creature targets. The second year also saw the beginning of students starting to drop out due to training of the original forty recruits they were down to thirty two by the end of second year.

Third Year continued the trend. They were put through even more fitness requirements while being fed potions in addition to the already specific diet. The potions helped promote improvements in reflex as well as stimulating the immune system. They had also began to learn about explosives in addition to the other classes they were already going, third year also saw the first death from training. While going across an obstacle course Jamie Hodge fell from the wall climb and landed head first, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. The final amount of recruits after third year had dwindled to twenty eight.

Fourth Year increased the work load again adding more potions to the diet these ones stimulating muscle growth and healing ability in addition to another couple that slowly but surely enhanced things like sight and hearing. Another class had also been added to the overall roster Magical Law, it was important for a Witcher to not only know their rights, as their was a lot of discrimination against them for not only be Squibs but in the eyes of some pureblood's, and even some others, also freaks. The class also helped by teaching the prospective Witcher's exactly what they could and could not get away with under magical law as well as a few helpful loop holes. Fourth year saw another two deaths, one a suicide by Argus Carrow a Squib from the pureblooded Carrow family after he was disowned by his father and mother.

Argus had always been a nice guy, helpful to other and quick with a joke but his self-esteem had always been flaky at best. From what Harry could tell the disownment was the last thing Argus could take on top of the already gruelling training and took his own life, Hector Carrow hadn't even bothered to come to his son's funeral. So Argus had been given a traditional Witcher's cremation before his ashes were scattered to the four winds to rest where ever the dead dwell. Harry wished him more luck in the next life than he had in his first one.

The final count of remaining Witcher candidates after fourth year was twenty four.

Fifth Year had arguably been the hardest, the fitness requirements had been increased once more, they had began learning the minor magic of Signs and a kind of test had been added. If a prospective Witcher wished to continue with their training they had to undergo a series of Rituals collectively named The Trials.

The First Trial was The Trial of the Grasses. The Potions and diet they had been fed over the years had improved the candidates bodies to the best that could be expected of them at their age. The Trial, that composed of both a ritual and one final potion, would make those changes permanent so that the Witcher Candidates would no longer need the potions and diet to keep the enhanced strength, speed and reflexes granted by their intense training and the cocktail of potions.

It was also incredibly painful and potentially lethal. Which was exactly the reason Witcher Candidates were given the option to leave rather than undergo what was the most lethal part of the entire training process. They were also warned that if they continued then they would no longer be allowed to leave they would either become a Witcher in mind, body and soul or die.

None had left.

Of the twenty four that had undertaken the trial four had died and one had gone homicidally insane and had to be put down bringing the final number of candidates down to nineteen. Harry could only compare the pain created by The Trial of the Grasses to the Cruciatus Curse that they had been placed under in training.

The end results had spoken for themselves however, just as promised they no longer needed the potions and special diet to maintain their inhuman physical abilities. Harry, who would have been physically stronger than most anyway due to his body's natural enhancements, had been granted an even more powerful body by the Trial, it was the reason he could lift over half a ton when the occasion called for it. Most Witcher's didn't get that much of an increase, the upper limit for the vast majority being anywhere between two hundred and three hundred kilos. That said more was not unheard of either, his own Master, Letho of Gulet, could lift one and a half tonnes at absolute maximum.

Next came The Trial of Dreams, consisting of several potions and one ritual. The Trial permanently enhanced ones senses while granting enhanced night vision though mutation of the pupils was inevitable when this occurred. While back in the old days Witcher eyes turned Gold with cat like slits for pupils with the more efficient potions of the present the colour change no longer happened, though the cat like pupils were still present.

The Final Trial was The Trial of the Mountain and while it contained no potions or rituals it was arguably the most gruelling of all of them. You were allowed one week to mentally prepare and get used to the enhancements before they were dropped, individually, in one of three locations. The Black Forest of Germany, one of the many Boreal Forests of Russia and finally The Białowieża Forest of Poland.

They were sent inside in the middle of winter into three of the most heavily forested places on earth. Where wild magic was still extremely common and your enemy wasn't just animals and plants but also magical creatures in addition to the very land itself as it would make even a Witcher freeze to death if they couldn't find enough shelter and warmth.

The instructions were simple, survive for one month.

Leaving the Forest was considered to be a declaration that you wished to leave The Acadmey and the candidates were told on no uncertain terms that was this the case they would be killed to protect the secrets now engraved in their bodies. Harry himself had been dropped into the Białowieża Forest with nothing but a silver sword, flint, compass and a survival knife. He'd looked but found no one, one month later Vesemir had turned up at the cave he'd been hiding out in an easy smile on his face and portkey in hand to take him back to The Academy,

Harry had never been so glad to see anyone.

The final death count for Fifth Year had been eight bringing the total number of candidates down to sixteen.

Sixth Year had been easier than the death trap before it, once Harry had wondered why there were so few Witcher's.

He didn't any more.

Sixth Year focused on refining what they already knew as Vesemir had told them, no new classes would be added for that year onward they would simply focus on refining them into the best Apprentices they could be. That had been another change their title was no longer of Witcher Candidates but Apprentice Witcher's.

Seventh Year proceeded much in the same way as Sixth had however that didn't mean that the death count had stopped, by the end of seventh year only fourteen Apprentices remained of the original forty.

Eighth Year had been where things got shaken up. Now that they had all of the tools necessary to hunt all that was left was to gain skill in a practical environment, it was for this reason that all Apprentice Witcher's were assigned to an active one in order to see how they performed in the real world.

Harry's own Teacher had been a giant of a man named Letho, who commanded the greatest physical strength of any Witcher that had ever been recorded.

Harry's personal prowess of being able to move half a ton when needed or six hundred and fifty kilos at his absolute maximum was easily eclipsed by Master Witcher Letho of Gulet. Letho was a monster of a man, Harry was not short at all just scraping six foot tall however his Master dwarfed even his hight by a large margin. When standing upright Letho of Gulet was around seven and a half feet tall and the man was built as well. Thick arms and legs criss-crossed by scars granted over the two hundred years that Letho had been a Witcher. He was completely bald but had a distinctive V shaped scar on his forehead, the most fearsome thing about the man however had been his cunning mind.

The ability to lift a tonne and a half certainly made the man a huge physical threat but it was his mind that made his Master truly terrifying. Most people who met Letho of Gulet saw him as a brute, something that they assumed he was due to his less than stellar looks coupled with the scar upon his head and Letho had no problem with people believing that. He let people think that as much as they wanted, in his Master's own words it was much easier to take someone by surprise if they thought you nothing more than a dumb brute. It made it much, much easier to out think your opponents when they believed themselves to be superior to you.

The potions and diet along with the rituals one underwent as a Witcher only enhanced what was already there. When Letho was born, back in 1748 if his Master was to be believed, the ability he had gained as a Squib had been superior strength it had only been enhanced by the process. However while he could never be as strong as the Master Witcher that did not mean that Letho did not have plenty still to teach him, besides the more in-depth realities of life in the field Harry had also been taught how to play to his strengths.

So what if he wasn't as directly strong as his opponent? Letho was stronger than he was, however as his master was quick to point out Harry was faster. While his bodily enhancements hadn't been overwhelmingly strong in any particular area as a Squib, unlike Letho himself with his strength or Samuel one of the other Apprentice's who had incredible eye sight far beyond the norm even for Witchers, unlike nearly all other's his basic ability as a Squib had enhanced his body overall instead of in just a single area and the enhancement of the potions and rituals simply compounded that.

He was The Jack of All Trades to their Specialist.

Harry had stayed with Letho of Gulet, who still used that name despite the fact stating where you were from had died out centuries before. Probably the curse of old age really getting set in your ways, when Witcher's enhanced their healing abilities with the ritual and potions they naturally extended their lifespan as well as a result of that. Harry himself was looking at outliving his immediate family by centuries, hell Vesemir was the eldest Witcher alive and he was apparently born in 1536, the man was going on six hundred at this point and looked in his mid sixties as well, if he died of natural causes there was a good chance that Harry James Potter would outlive the House of Potter itself.

However this process of enhancement and rituals also made Witcher's sterile, or at least it used to, thanks to more advances in Potions and Rituals that was no longer the case. Thought that was only true for the last fifty years, that said no Witcher during that time frame had actually had a child either. It was just in their nature not to Harry guessed, they were in a profession that usually punished even the slightest mistake with death.

Who wanted to bring a child into the world knowing that they may never see it grow up and that they would have the stigma of having a Witcher as a parent as well. While their skills were usually in high demand it did not change the fact that most of purebloood society, the ruling class of many Wizarding Nations, did not look favourably upon them and even then a lot of Half-Bloods and Muggleborns were distrustful as well, many considering them unnatural. The fact that Witcher's were often used as Mage killers when a Wizard or Witch went bad probably didn't help matters.

If the people wanted you captured the Ministry of Magic sent Aurors, if they wanted you dead they sent a Witcher.

It was a similar kind of discrimination faced by many magical races such as Dwarves and High Elves. Not that other races didn't get their fare share of discrimination as well, Vampires and Werewolves for example still got a bad rap despite the fact that most went out of their way not to harm people. Werewolves locking themselves up during full moons and now that blood banks were a common thing most Vampire Clans owned several and used that to sate their hunger instead of live humans.

Not that traditionalist Vampires didn't exist, they most certainly did, however they were most definitely in the minority and, more importantly, if they stirred up to much trouble the other vampires would put them down permanently.

Usually it was the Ministry of Magic stirring up trouble against them. To the best that Harry could tell there reason for it was simply that Magical Creatures had always been easy targets throughout history. Well that and it was easier to blame other people for your problems than admit that the system was broken and needed to be fixed and the system most certainly did need to be fixed, badly.

At any rate his last two years as an apprentice were spent under Letho of Gulet's tender, loving care. Which usually involved Harry getting his ass handed to him in various types of combat at least once a day and then occasionally hunting monsters side by side with the Master Witcher. For the first year Letho did most of the leg work teaching Harry the finer points of hunting down a monster that needed killing. Then as of their last year together he slowly gave more and more work over to his Apprentice until when it was time for them to part Harry knew exactly how to investigate what he was hunting, find out more about it, work out what strengths and weaknesses it had and devise a plan to kill it.

When he and the other Apprentice Witcher's had returned to The Academy there had been two less of them bringing the graduating class size down to twelve who received the title of Witcher for their efforts over the last ten years.

Then they had gotten drunk, really, really drunk.

In fact Harry woke up on the opposite bank of the river from Marladn, the large Wizarding town closest to The Academy, that was still at least forty miles away. He had also managed to lose his shirt and left boot somewhere during the night. After carefully piecing the night together apparently he had made a bet with Simon that he could ride a whore's ass across a river, as it turned out he was completely capable of that particular feat.

When he had returned to The Academy, a day behind everyone else, Vesemir had inquired as to where he was, after hearing the story both the eldest Witcher and Geralt of Rivia, who had been visiting his old mentor at the time, had devolved in gawfs of laughter. The legendary White Wolf mentioning that he had made much the same bet, to the exact same result, some two hundred years previous.

All in all it had been a good graduation day.

But nothing could last forever, and at age twenty Harry James Potter, carrying the title of Witcher left The Academy for London.

 **XXX**

"Mmmm, mergle," The sounds that resisted someone barely awake came from the mouth of Harry Potter. It was fair to say that he was certainly not a morning person, that said most monsters were nocturnal so it made sense that the morning was not his favourite time of day. Rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands the black haired Witcher slowly opened them, cat like pupils quickly adjusting to the light.

Morning, already, he hated mornings.

Monday's too, though that seemed to be more of a universal thing among working people.

Harry had always told himself that he could be one of those mythical Morning People, a breed of man and woman so rare many thought them nothing more than a fairy tale. To be fair it was entirely possible for Harry James Potter to become a morning person, provided that morning was willing to move itself to somewhere in the vivacity of thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred.

However as a scene from a famous movie would tell us.

But It Is Not This Day!

Standing the dark haired man revealed his body to world, toned and muscled through years of rigorous training along with simulated and real combat Harry Potter's body was hard packed muscle. It was meant to be used, not the showy kind that were commonly found in Body Builder competitions. Most people would also notice three very distinctive scars across his body, the first being what looked like five nail marks that wrapped around his left shoulder and came to rest on his chest just above his nipple. The legacy of a particularly nasty vampire that he had made the mistake of underestimating.

Not that all vampires were bad though, two of his best friends were vampires.

The second was a star burst like scar just to the right of his stomach, a matching exit wound on his back. A reminder that dodging a psychopathic Faery that wanted to kill you was a better idea than trying to block it's spear when it had a couple of hundred years experience and you're just over seventeen.

The final scar was across his nose travelling from one side of the bridge to the other. He, like so many before him, had underestimated Letho of Gulet. When they first met Harry had figured the older man to be nothing more than he appeared, a dumb brute who was extremely strong. It had taken Letho approximately fifteen seconds to disarm him kick him around a bit and scar his nose, it would have been easy enough to get rid of the scar but Harry had chosen to keep it as a solid reminder that ones appearance rarely dictated ones true nature.

Slipping on a pair of pants the dark haired man made his way to the kitchen and idly poured himself a bowl of Froot Loops before switching on the laptop he kept on the kitchen table. It was always there so he could boot it up first thing in the morning and look at Google Calendar in order to get an idea of what he had on. Thankfully unlike 99% of all Wizards, Witchers actually made use of a little thing called The Internet. It allowed them to communicate jobs that were on offer in each city to every Witcher in the world and, more importantly, it allowed them to pick and choose what they wanted to do from the comfort of their own home. Once the job was complete all they had to do was show proof, which actually required travelling to The Academy in some cases or just lodging the appropriate forms in with The Ministry of that particular country, it varied from job to job.

For Harry personally it also let him check out which days he needed to head in for lectures and such. As a returning part-time student at University Collage London he did occasionally have to turn up and actually attend lectures. Though most of the time he had to conduct research and submit projects and research papers, it wasn't actually that strange for a Witcher to seek higher education. After all their entire job revolved around hunting and killing monsters thought only to be found in myths and legends, occasionally this meant that they stumbled upon things that really, really defied all expectations.

For example after clearing out a hive of some kind of mutant humans in the Amazon, Letho wasn't exactly clear on what they were like but he made it very clear that they were feral and liked to eat people. His master had found very cryptic clues that seemed to hint at the existence of El Dorado, yes the lost city of gold, no they hadn't found it yet. But Harry was hoping that with the degrees he was working towards as a part time student, Archaeology and Ancient History, perhaps he could work towards getting them a little closer to finding the lost city.

Oh and making them all filthy rich.

At least that was what he told Letho when the older man asked about why he was studying. Honestly speaking Harry just enjoyed having something normal in his life, sure the other stuff was great but something that was structured and almost completely devoiced from his day job was absolutely wonderful in its own way.

That being said the fact that he could well make them all filthy rich if he found the lost city had been a very nice motivator as well.

Looking at the screen Harry munched on a spoonful of Froot Loops. Well it looked like he had a lecture at eleven am to one pm with Dr. Whitman, knowing the man there would be no Q and A session at the end that meant he would need to put some more time aside than usual to look into the subject that were certainly going to come up. Closing the page Harry quickly logged into the Witcher homepage, anyone could discover it by accident but if they did it simply looked like an ordinary companies homepage with a login button for employees. A box manufacturing company at that, not something anyone was going to waste time trying to break into.

Entering his ID and Password, WarMachineRox, because fuck Iron Patriot, Harry found himself entering the 'hidden', for lack of a better term, part of the website. It was nothing to fancy to look at, rather it was utilitarian and did the job much like Witchers themselves. The main part of the page was an overview on what was happening to them overall on the international scale, it also listed all Witchers that had died in the last month. Harry had long since stopped looking at the obituaries column, if anyone he knew was dead he'd get a letter about it.

The top of the site quite clearly had seven linked tabs Home, Jobs, Reviews, Bestiary, Potions, Runes and finally More Information. Each was very self explanatory, except perhaps Reviews unlike normal websites the Reviews section was not about what customers had thought of them but rather reviews on different types of weaponry and how they could be compared against others, all penned by fellow Witchers that had used said equipment in the field.

Harry quickly clicked on Job and entered London England in the desired boxes. Less than a second later he had his list, both Ministry of Magic overflow and private jobs that people just needed done it was a good mix of both with all the information laid out before him. Most of it was about Ghosts, not that he had anything against them but Harry preferred not to deal with them when he could avoid it, besides there was a job that both paid better and was more than a little disturbing.

According to what he was reading a man had died earlier that week who, according to police reports, was wanted for several violent crimes in other parts of the country. More interesting still, his van was filled with human organs, ones that were most certainly illegally harvested. The man had also been confirmed as a Each-Uisge by the Ministry, which is why they were getting involved at all.

The job, in a nutshell, was to see if an organ harvesting ring was going on in London or the surrounding area then shut it down. If that meant calling in support from the Auror Corps then so be it, in fact according to the contract Amelia Bones would actually prefer if Aurors were contacted before an attempt was made to raid the operation, if it existed.

The description went on to mention that the Aurors were in fact working on the case as well, but from a different angle. The reward for the entirety was five hundred Galleons, or around two thousand five hundred pounds, not surprising as the case was considered to be sensitive and needed to be handled quickly. Harry checked the box marked accept and after receiving the confirmation of acceptance e-mail from the site closed the browser down.

Well there were more than a few things that dealt with human organs but in Britan the three most common monsters that traded in human flesh, excepting humans themselves which were far and away at the head of the pack. The first were the Each-Uisge a Water-Horse, or more acceptably a Water-Demon. When it came onto land an Each-Uisge could disguise itself in a multitude of ways, as a beautiful horse or pony, a giant bird or a good looking man. If it could get it's prey near water then in the old days the creature would pull them into the water and devour the body, well all except for the liver.

While for the most part Each-Uisge no longer practised the killing and eating of humans there were more than enough traditionalists left amongst them that it did cause a problem on occasion. Due to the traditionalist desire to still kill and consume humans those that went down that path tended to make money buy selling human organs that they did not consume, however while a Each-Uisge was involved that didn't mean it was the only type of creature that could be responsible.

The second that could be most easily identifiable were Cynocephalus, they were strange ones. Humans with the heads of dogs that lived to hunt and kill, while many had become far more docile and accepting of human culture, often immersing themselves in it, more than enough clung to the old ways to make them a problem. Much like the Each-Uisge they could assume a human form when it pleased them to but there were ways of checking, the most obvious was that a Cynocephalus' breath smelt of decaying meat if they had just eaten human flesh. Much like the Each-Uisge they tended to sell what they did not consume, which made them another excellent guess for a creature that could be involved.

The last two were somewhat less likely as the vast majority of their population no longer fed on humans and their traditionalist factions were extremely small. First were the Martyaxwar, an older cousin of the Manticore blood line much like the link between humans and chimpanzees the Martyaxwar were the more intelligent cousins of the Maticore. The other was a Vampire of some kind, honestly there were to many to keep track of but that was unlikely. Most vampires were quite happy to make a good living as a human and drink a glass of blood once every four or five days to stay sane.

But still it was more than possible that either a Martyaxwar or a Vampire was involved just far less likely.

Hell it wasn't like the list stopped at just those either but they were the most likely creatures to be involved. Most of the others didn't have the level of intelligence, or shape shifting ability necessary, to interact with human civilisation and the chances of a Wendigo being involved were laughable. They rarely left America and when they did a manhunt was called down on where ever it was unfortunate enough to end up.

There was a very simple standing order for Wendigo's in every part of the world, Kill on Sight.

They were incredibly powerful, ridiculously fast, strong and durable killing machines animated by a malicious spirit that didn't feel pain or fatigue. That was something no one wanted in their backyard if they could possibly help it, the real problem was that Wendigo's were smart, very, very, smart and could easily blend in with normal society wearing the skin of one of their kills to conceal their true appearance.

Again there was a very good reason for that Kill on Sight order.

Still he had a few idea's on where to start looking for information on the possibly organ smuggling ring, more than a couple of places of less than stellar repute in Knockturn ally for example. He'd need to visit a few of them and 'ask' for help on the matter. Then he'd need to narrow down exactly what was doing the harvesting and prepare for the upcoming fight appropriately.

Knockturn ally would also likely be down at least one business man or woman by the end of the day. But considering that whoever he 'talked' to was selling human organs Harry really did not think he would be terribly plagued by that. This was also likely the other reason that contract was being offered, Aurors had to follow legal channels in order to get results. So long as he didn't get caught Harry didn't have to, but that was going to have to wait since he had class in an two hours and by the time he'd finished having a shower, getting dressed, doing the rest of his morning rituals it would be time to go.

Shuffling to the shower Harry turned the hot water on hard, his apartment had approximately two settings when it came to water. Ice Age and Mordor, considering it was a cold morning Harry was feeling in a Mordor mood. Water just short of scalding slammed into his body instantly shaking off any residual feeling of drowsiness and completely booting his brain into high gear. Which meant he could get to planning the rest of his day, the shower was most definitely the best place for that.

First get dressed.

Service Ivory.

Pack things for Uni.

Get all concealed weapons on his person.

Come back home get other gear.

Talk to shop keepers.

Compile hunting ID's.

Visit Armoury if needed.

Brew Potions.

Send information to Department of Magical Law Enforcement, if there was enough to send.

Stepping out of the shower Harry quickly dried himself off and slipped on his clothes for the day, brown boots, blue pants and a red shirt with a dark jacket over top. It was cold and even though Harry knew that his training allowed him to ignore the cold, fact of the matter was that he didn't want to do that. Just because you could ignore the cold didn't make you any more warm when you stopped doing that, and it usually stung like a bitch too all that sensory information hitting you all at once.

Sitting down at the desk in his room Harry quickly pulled out his favoured weapon and the servicing kit he always kept near it. Ivory was a heavily modified Sig Sauer 1911, the additions had been placed on by Klaus, the man who oversaw the Kockturn ally Armoury. Most Witchers that operated in England knew him by another moniker The Gunsmith. The one man that everyone went to see if they wanted some sort of custom upgrade to their weapon, especially when they didn't want something that was strictly legal and a lot of the stuff on Ivory would have been very difficult to pass off as legal in Britain.

Such as the compensator attached to the barrel for added stability during rapid fire and the rail added to the underside of the barrel to ensure it stayed in place. Combat sights, the gun was meant for up close and personal at close quarters he needed to be able to pick up a target as fast as possible. Pivot trigger as opposed to the normal straight pull, just because he liked the feel more and what was more important than feeling comfortable with your weapon? The two most difficult to pass off as legal though would most likely have to be the choice of firing speed, semi-auto, three round burst and full auto while the other was the fact that Ivory had a slew of extended magazines meant to be used exclusively with the gun, all taking a grand total of twelve bullets as opposed to a normal 1911's seven rounds and while he was at it Harry had also had the man install rosewood grips, hardly illegal but still quite expensive, that said with the amount he'd spent on Ivory already Harry had figured why the hell not.

Which was exactly why unless he was working Harry tended to leave the gun at home, locked very tightly behind both magical and mundane defences. Methodically the dark haired Witcher disassembled his weapon and set about the routine maintenance. While it was true you didn't have to clean a gun every single day it was something of a morning ritual for him, Ivory also had an appointment with Klaus every six months for a full check-up even if nothing had seemed out of place with the weapon, just in case.

To reiterate, Harry really, really, loved his gun.

Finishing the morning maintenance he stood shutting Ivory back inside its safe and locking the door both normally and magically then heading about the rest of his day. Harry quickly grabbed the bag near the door to his room and threw a pair of A4 note books inside as well as a pencil case. A laptop was certainly a helpful tool but you always had to be ready if it ran out of power, or if you simply wanted to write something down rather than type it. A smaller spiral bound notebook followed as well as his journal, the one place he was writing all of his current findings on where El Dorado could possibly be located.

It wasn't much.

A much thicker book followed, this one being on his research on the ancient Japanese kingdom of Yamatai. Though unlike Archaeologists Harry actually knew the ancient kingdom existed, he was not just guessing. Magical history, though usually quite dryly written, was also very factual if biased in the favour of Wizards over other magical races. They confirmed that Yamatai was an actual place though it had eventually been destroyed, originally Yamatai had been a collection of ten islands ruled over by The Sun Queen Himiko. A powerful Shaman that could control the weather itself, this happened somewhere between 300BC and 300AD, that much both Muggle and Magical History agreed on.

However unlike Muggle history Magical history actually had a reason for Yamatai's loss. According to the history he had studied Yamatai was hit by a series of Earthquakes and Tsunamis in a very short order. Judging by what Harry could tell of the time frame it matched the rough time that Atlantis destroyed itself so the events were likely connected. These Tsunami's and Earthquakes destroyed most of Yamatai's islands leaving only the island that contained Himiko's royal palace and its surrounding village.

Which itself went missing around a year after the disaster. According to ancient records Himiko herself hid the island using her Shamanistic powers, or at least that was the assumption as the island could no longer be reached. As for where it was or how it got there Harry had no clue, he just knew the place existed and most likely still did. Personally Harry was studying Yamatai for his next assignment but if his paper led to the finding of the lost kingdom then he would certainly not be adverse to the fame, and more importantly the money, that came with it.

That said the dark haired Witcher was not one to indulge in self-delusion, the chances of that happening were unlikely at best.

Dropping his laptop into the bag Harry turned to his next order of business, arming himself. Being a Witcher was a dangerous line of work and had taught him the value of being armed at all times, even if he could not be armed to the teeth as most Witchers preferred to be. A pair of long combat knives were strapped to his lower back followed by another on his left leg underneath his pants. On his right leg, just above his boot Harry holstered a Sig Sauer P938 BRG a small concealed carry handgun that fired 9mm rounds. One in the chamber and six in the magazine giving him seven shots in total before the magazine ran dry and he would need to replace it, two spares were strapped just above the gun, giving him enough room to draw but being low enough on his leg to be covered by the baggy pants.

It was the kind of armaments he would go hunting with but if attacked, even by a supernatural foe, it should give him enough time to retreat and resupply. It didn't really matter what you were up against, shoot it in the head and that tended to give you enough time to run away, even if it might not actually kill whatever you had just shot. As Letho had once told him, when in doubt try shooting it in the head, that tended to work.

Snatching his bag up off of the table Harry gave a shot wihistle and grabbed his phone on the way out of his room. Ambling through the combined kitchen, living and dining room the he grabbed the car keys and house keys before taking one last look around. His apartment was not particularly large containing only a bedroom, bathroom and the combined kitchen, dining and living area, but Harry truly liked it none the less, the fact it was cheap at only one hundred and twenty pounds a week was certainly a plus as well. Seeing nothing out of place he pulled open the front door and stepped outside into the cold October morning, not that he found the cold to be surprising it was Autumn after all.

It would take a short drive to get into London proper from his flat in Romford. Ideally Harry hadn't wanted to have to make a drive every time he went in to UCL but he needed to make sacrifices for privacies sake. All of the closer apartments he had found had all been shared accommodation and due to the nature of his job Harry really did not want people poking around his room. After all it simply would do for someone to find the books on creatures or all the weapons that were hidden around, if that happened then, as unfortunate as it was, he would need to invade their thoughts with Legilimency and knock them unconscious before forcing them to ingest a forgetfulness potion.

It was honestly just to much trouble.

Due to the possibility of that actually happening being quite real, Harry chose to live out in Romford rather than closer to the city itself, a small price to pay for privacy all things considered. His small apartment was also a very strange place to have an Audi A4 parked out the front. While Harry very rarely asked his parents for anything, or made use of the large amount of Galleons that were in his vault this was one of the times that he had been very grateful that his parents were, in fact, loaded.

The A4 was the single most expensive thing he owned and Harry didn't really want to know how much Lilly and James Potter had paid for it. It was a graduation present for finishing his training, alive and well, honestly speaking Harry wasn't sure he could have thought of a better one. Even though Sirius had insisted that sending him to Las Vegas with fifteen thousand pounds would have been better.

Either way he loved the car, hitting the immobiliser the doors clicked open and Harry slipped inside. Inside the car was only slightly better than the outside, the A4 came to life with a hum and Harry wasted no time in turning the air conditioner on with the heat right up. It was cold and if he didn't have to deal with it then it wasn't going to, pulling out of the driveway and onto the road he synced his phone to the bluetooth and hit play.

'Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me, I ain't the smartest tool in the shed.' All Star by Smash Mouth came straight out of the speakers as Harry turned onto the A12 and started heading into London proper. It was a good thing that the job he'd taken earlier had come up when it had, being a Witcher was not always the most lucrative of work and big job usually came around once every few months at best. Outside from those Harry supported himself by taking smaller jobs as well as working part time as a bartender on the docks.

Turning his focus to his research Harry considered what Doctor Whitman would be lecturing about. The man was a condescending asshole, but he knew his stuff. Whitman also presented a T.V program called Whitman's World, it was actually quite interesting all things considered. Though the man himself could certainly stand to be less of an ass Harry did wonder when the second season would be coming out.

Then again according to the man himself they wouldn't begin filming until mid February next year so he could likely expect season two in the back half of that year. If it wasn't for the fact that it would likely make Whitman even harder to be around Harry would be looking forward to it more. Guiding the Audi around a black van Harry pulled into the turn off lane with the distracted skill of a man that had done that hundreds of times before, which he had besides being the road he took to university it was also the same road Harry used to get to The Leaky Cauldron.

Of course thinking of Whitman naturally led to another Archaeologist, though admittedly not one that Harry knew particularly well. Lara Croft, while being a year younger than him the young woman was almost finished her degree. In fact if Harry remembered correctly then Lara actually finished around December, most likely graduating at the top of her class as well if what he had heard through the grapevine was right. While he didn't know her particularly well it was the younger woman that had pointed him in the right direction regarding information on Yamatai.

It wasn't enough to make them friends but he did occasionally collaborate some information with her, or send her links and books that he found on the subject. Lara did the same for him in return, it really was a big help in unearthing more information on the lost kingdom but somehow Harry doubted they'd be sharing a friendly drink of coffee and talking about how their days had been any time soon. 

It was a working relationship after all.

He did however pity her for being Whitman's Research Assistant, extra credits for her graduation and more availability on research materials. Not sure if he would call putting up with Whitman worth all that but Lara seemed to handle it well enough, Harry doubted he'd be able to do it for two weeks before punching the man.

Pulling down on the steering wheel Harry parked in his usual bay. It was the one furthest from the campus' front doors which meant most people avoided it like the plague. He really didn't see the big deal in walking the extra five hundred meters, sure if it was raining he would be singing a much different tune but it wasn't so no problem at all there. Grabbing his bag Harry stepped out of the car and locked it with a quick press of the immobiliser before slowly walking towards the lecture hall, he was still twenty minutes early after all.

Besides it was slightly less cold now, just settling into an area of temperature he actually enjoyed. Harry whistled as he made his way inside, two hours of lectures with Whitman then off to interrogate shopkeepers in Knockturn, there was no doubt in his mind that the second was going to be more enjoyable than the first. Opening the door to the lecture hall with a shrug Harry took a seat near the back, close enough to hear well far enough away to not be called on to answer questions by the egotist.

A small smile made it's way to his face as the dark haired Witcher looked at his journal, pulling out the laptop he would be taking notes on.

No rest for the Wicked.

 **Chapter One- End.**

 **Other Notes-**

I only just started playing Tomb Raider 2013 recently so the bits about it in there are just because I wanted to reference it.

No promises that it will become part of the story.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Witcher**

 **Chapter Two: Stacking The Deck**

 **Authors Note-**

 ****Chapter two enjoy!

Also to the guy who told me to strop describing every little thing, I understand why that might annoy you but no I'm not going to stop. That's just the way I write if that bothers you then I am not going to apologise for that. If it affects your enjoyment of the story then that is unfortunate but, ultimately, not my problem.

Also on the that Guest bought up, please get a profile I actually wanted to send you a PM about this, why take away the Sterility and Golden Eyes aspect.

Things that are normal for Witchers.

Well the blunt reason for that is quite simple, because, getting past all of the other bullshit, being a Witcher is kind of shitty life and I decided that in taking away the Sterility aspect it might not suck quite so much. As for removing the golden eyes aspect that was more due to the fact that I believe that after so much time the process would have been refined further and normal coloured eyes, even if they have strange pupils, allow Witchers to blend into society with greater ease.

That said they are still a target for many of the more common things that appear in The Witcher Universe. Such as being almost universally distrusted by Wizards, being thought of as Freaks by many others and generally just being considered to be unnatural and, in some cases, unwanted. The only reason that Wizards, or at least the pureblood faction, have not actively attempted to render all Witchers extinct is the value they have, while many purebloods hate them for being both Squibs and Freaks of nature everyone can use the help of a professional.

Also, while not as prevalent, distrust extends through quite a lot of the half-bloods and even the muggle-borns due to the secrecy that Witcher's tend to have in addition to the fact that they have been employed historically, and still are at present, as Wizard killers.

Its a sort of irony really that most Witchers end up being better friends with the creatures that they were created to hunt due to their mutual ostracisation from society then other humans.

To the guy who asked about what other Witcher characters we will be seeing.

I can confirm that Letho will play a large part in an upcoming arc and you will at least see Geralt, Triss, Yennefer and many others at points in the story. How much of a role they will play I don't know but I'm going to try to work the Witcher games into this story somehow so hopefully they can all get screen time, or rather page time, there.

Also I'm currently playing Wild Hunt so Ciri will probably also make it in somehow, just give me some time to work out how I'm going to tweak her origin to fit.

Anyway second chapter, editied this while half asleep from exaustion so I'll probably go back through it over the next few days and iron out all the major stuff that I don't get now. 

Enjoy and if you have any questions please send me a PM entitled The Witcher Questions, that should get me to reply.

Enjoy.

 **Story Start-**

Harry Potter idly played with the pen he was flipping between his fingers. Having finished the lecture two hours ago it had given the dark haired Witcher plenty of time to head back to his apartment and gather the necessary items for the interrogation that could well be happening shortly. His thoughts kept going back to Whitman's lecture, How Weather Could Affect a Dig Site. The weather, could that be the key to finding Yamatai?

The Sun Queen Himiko had vast Shamanistic powers over the weather after all and there was evidence to support she had been using some kind of ritual to extend her own life span. In addition to summoning up Oni and bonding them with the bodies of her Samurai creating the legendary Storm Guard. Could it be possible that some vestiges of her power remained behind? Yamatai had moved from it's original location that much was true however no matter how powerful Himiko was there had to be a limit on how far the Island could be moved.

The Dragons Triangle an area of ocean around five hundred kilometres away from Yamatai's original resting place was known to have unpredictable changes in weather. Could some vestiges of Himiko's power be causing that phenomenon? If so maybe the lost kingdom now lay in one of the most dangerous parts of ocean in the world, or perhaps it was fairer to say The Dragons Triangle became dangerous because of Yamatai, if his theory was correct and it was entirely possible it wasn't.

It didn't matter right now, but it certainly bore some more looking into. Harry knew he was in for some long nights checking up on magical theory based around large scale transportation. A small Island was all that had remained of the original Yamatai, this much was true, but a small Island was still a huge mass for a few dozen, or even a few hundred, Witches or Wizards to move.

But if this theory was correct then maybe he could narrow down exactly where Yamatai was by cross referencing where the most violent and volatile storms were. Assuming that something left behind by Himiko was causing the abnormalities in weather then it stood to reason that it would be at the centre of the most violent weather.

Shaking his head Harry stepped out of his car, it could wait for later but that theory definitely bore some looking in to. A little forethought usually went a long way and as such Harry had gone ahead and changed his wardrobe for the upcoming interrogation. Nothing he would do after getting to the store he'd picked out would be legal in either the Muggle or Magical worlds so it was very important that he was not caught.

Unlike before he now wore a simple combination of black pants, a white shirt and his jacket, inside the briefcase he was holding Harry also a robe ready to change into along with a hood charmed to conceal ones identity a very common item amongst those going into Knockturn Ally. Ivory was strapped safely to his lower back, a pair of spare magazines just above his gun. It was unlikely that Ivory would actually see any use in pitched combat but it was always nice to have extra ammo, just in case everything went to hell. Just above Ivory sat another handgun, this one a CO2 powered tranquiliser dart gun, model X-2, and unlike Ivory it would definitely be seeing use in the very near future.

Stepping out of the car park Harry quickly made his way over to The Leaky Cauldron, it wasn't a far walk, only five minutes by foot and in addition to that the bar was located in one of the less frequented areas which meant less pedestrian traffic. Which also meant that there was far less of a possibility of some Muggle seeing him walk into what was apparently an empty lot and disappearing. While The Leaky Cauldron did have wards, such as the Muggle Repelling Ward, it wasn't perfect. If someone was watching him from down the road then they would literally see someone disappear into thin air, and like every single person with half a scrap of curiosity they would come over and try to find out what had just happened.

According to Tom, the owner and barkeep of the Leaky Cauldron, incidents like that happened around once a month. It wasn't something that was hard to fix, Tom just stuck his head outside stunned the poor Muggle, called in the Obliviators and got their new memories straightened out before sending them on their way with no real harm done. The problem for Harry personally was that if he was the reason that a Muggle had become suspicious he would need to wait around to give a statement to the Obliviator about how it was not a deliberate attempt at Muggle Baiting or an attempt to challenge the Statute of Secrecy.

It was a standard thing that everyone had to do if they were the unlucky man or woman that got a Muggle to come down and check out The Leaky Cauldron. Apparently the Oblivators had done the job so often they actually gave people a template so all they had to do was tick a few boxes and sign in addition to explaining what had happened, according to Tom it was a wonderful time saver. That said it wasn't the report that Harry wanted to avoid, it was the Ministry of Magic knowing he was in Diagon.

Witcher Harry Potter takes a contract from The Department of Magical Law Enforcement and then a shopkeeper that is known for trafficking illicit goods ends up dead with traces of Veritaserum in their system. Yeah like no one was going to put that together, giving a quick look around Harry opened his briefcase and grabbed his robe, changing it over from the Jacket and pulling the hood up. He could disguise his own voice well enough that there was no need for additional charms on it, had made the robe much cheaper to.

That was always a plus, especially to a poor student like him. Say what you wanted about part time study it may not have cut into his jobs as much as full time would have but his profit margins still took quite the beating. Stepping inside the bar, Harry was greeted by a familiar setting of low lights and homely tables, Tom sitting behind the bar and reading a copy of The Daily Profit. Looking up the much older man took a single look at him and nodded just once, it was common courtesy not to talk to some in a cloak like his after all.

It signalled that they were not only on business but on business to Knockturn Ally and most likely would not at all enjoy being engaged in casual conversation. Walking straight through to the back Harry placed his hand on the brick he knew to be the activation key and pushed just a small amount of magic into it. The effect was instantaneous, with a sharp rumble the bricks fell backwards one by one at an increasing pace, revealing Diagon Ally. For most magical children the shop fronts and bright colours added a sense of wonder and mystique to the whole street, Harry Potter liked his life and loved his job, along with the camaraderie that came with being a Witcher. But no matter how long passed every time he saw Diagon Ally it caused him a sharp pain in his heart along with a second of completely irrational loathing for the Witches and Wizards around him.

He wasn't a part of their world, not really. He, like every other Witcher, was on the border between their world and the other, the Muggle, neither fully in one or the other, welcomed fully in neither one or the other. They were the light, people who could perform minor miracles with a wave of a tiny stick. However there would always be shadows, people like him, wherever there was light. After that instant both feelings past, it was to late to go crying over something like that now, besides unlike some Squibs Harry had a family that loved him and, perhaps even more importantly, he had The Witchers and no matter what happened they would always be family as well.

Because there were always shadows, wherever there was light. He belonged in neither one word nor the other, so did they. He was truly welcomed by neither the world of magic that had many see him as either a mistake, an accident or a freak. Nor however was he welcomed by the Muggles who would never be able to truly understand him without immersing themselves in a culture that they would never be allowed to know even existed.

It was an odd felling truly but the bonds between Witchers were far stronger for it, it helped knowing that even if you had never met before he could sit down opposite one of his own and be greeted like a long lost friend, well most of the time anyway. That was something that neither Muggles nor Wizards had, something that not many people had and once again, just like every other time he had come to Diagon Ally, knowing that made not being a Wizard all worth it.

With a quick shrug Harry headed deeper into the ally, green eyes ghosting over the displays outside of Flourish and Blotts. He would need to stop in there on his way out of the ally to get the books he would need to validate at least a part of his theory. Moving with a quick surety to his movements the dark haired Witcher moved through the throng of people with ease, it was a skill that one grew very competent with quickly if they frequented Diagon Ally on a regular basis.

Slipping down the side street two hundred meters from the front of Gringotts Bank set him right at the beginning of Knockturn Ally. You could find anything and everything if you looked hard enough in this place, from slaves to prostitutes and everything in between. However what he was looking for would be slightly easier to obtain, every store in Knockturn Ally sold questionable items, thankfully for Harry places in Knockturn Ally that would even attempt to sell human organs were less numerous.

A grim smile came to Harry's face as he turned down another of Knockturn Ally's twisting streets, he couldn't help but wonder one simple question.

Was he the hunter?

Or was he the the prey?

 **XXX**

"Hello, how may I help you?" The man who asked was good looking, almost inhumanely so. Long blond hair, well built, a fine pair of pants along with what Harry was fairly certain was a designer shirt and real leather boots, Dragon Hide unless he was mistaken. Not the kind of guy you would expect to be running a small store in the back allies of Knockturn Ally, the problem was that this man was not Peter Mitchell, the man Harry knew was both the sole owner and proprietor of Herbs and Remedies.

Peter certainly was not his friend, the man was greedy and close to completely amoral, but he had been a good source of information when he went to Klaus' bar once every two to three weeks. He hadn't been in for the last month and no one really knew how long this organ ring had been going on. Considering he was being greeted by someone completely different, it was a fair bet that Peter Mitchell was dead or perhaps he had sold the shop and moved? Harry really didn't know and truth be told he didn't really care.

Green eyes narrowed slightly as he felt the medallion on his chest start to vibrate. The twin snake medallion that had been gifted to him upon completion of his Apprenticeship had a variety of functions. The one that Harry found was usually the most useful was that it vibrated in the presence of Magical Creatures when they were in disguise, or when they had hostile intentions. Thankfully he had put in contact lenses before coming in, at least whatever was beneath the thin veneer of humanity hopefully wouldn't pick up on his true nature before it was to late. Otherwise, if he really was involved with the organ traffickers Ivroy really would be seeing use in pitched combat today.

"Ah I was told to come here for some...difficult to acquire herbs." Harry replied a small smile coming to his face. The blond haired man's mouth widened a bit more, exposing more teeth as he cheerfully nodded. His canines were slightly longer than normal, not long enough to be a Vampire, besides they could hide their fangs, but certainly longer than a normal human. Both Each-Uisge and Cynocephalus, usually had slightly longer than normal canine teeth when in human form, it was one of the tell-tale signs that what looked like a human might not actually be a human.

"And what herbs were you looking for?" The monster beneath a human facade inquired. Harry pretended to think for a second, as if trying to recall from memory the ingredients.

"I need spores from an adult Venomous Tentacula, poison not removed, and powdered Asphodel root." Harry replied quickly making the blond haired man's smile change to a smirk.

"Oh if I didn't know better I'd say you were looking to make some Veritaserum there friend. That substance is carefully controlled by the ministry of magic, maybe I should contact them about this possible breach of conduct?" The creature replied, Harry responded giving a smirk of his own and throwing him a bag of coin. Looking inside the being saw the glittering of no less than fifty Galleons. 

"I'm sure we could come to some kind of agreement." The dark haired Witcher replied his smirk not disappearing for a second. Making the creature before him nod and walk forward hand extended.

"Names James Wilson, nice to meet you." The creature introduced itself with a hearty handshake, whether it was it's real name or not Harry didn't much care.

"Malcolm White, pleased to meet you." Harry replied, slipping into an old alias one of ten he was more than comfortable in. When training to be a Witcher it was drilled into both Candidates and Apprentices that believability was paramount in your alias'. As such Malcolm White had a place of birth, several stories about growing up with a younger brother and sister, a favourite Football Club and Quidditch Club. Along with a supposed place of business and an intimate knowledge of the building said place of business was supposed to be located in. It would, in fact, be fair to say that Malcolm White was a person in and of himself.

"Now then lets see to your order shall we my friend?" The creature stated turning around, Harry didn't waste any time reaching behind him and pulling out the tranquiliser gun directly above Ivory. In a single smooth movement Harry targeted aimed and fired, the dart planting itself in the back of 'James Wilson' just next to the spine. Harry didn't stop even for a second, hitting the release on the X-2 and sliding another dart home locking the barrel back into place he pulled the trigger a second time. The second dart rushed out of the barrel and caught the creature as it turned around, directly in the side of the neck 'James Wilson' who dropped to the ground in a boneless heap less than a second later.

Most people thought of attacking from behind as dishonourable.

Most people were morons.

This wasn't some kind of duel were they faced off and of he won then Harry got the information that he wanted, no this was real life and in real life fighting fair, when one had the option to fight dirty, was the domain of the stupid and the dead. Harry was neither and he also really wanted to get paid for this whole ordeal. The next bit at least would be the easy one, placing his suitcase down on the floor the dark haired Witcher immediately got to work. Flicking the sign at the front of the store to closed before he did so, opening up the case revealed his tools of the trade.

Five vials of potions, five needles and a deck of cards. Each potion was designed to help him get the answers that he wanted, Veritaserum to ensure the answers were true to the best of the victims knowledge. Confusing Concoction to throw the mind into disarray and weaken the Occlumency barriers some of his prey occasionally possessed. Weakness Potion to ensure that not only were the possible Occlumency defences completely down but even should the creature, or person, he was interrogation manage to remove their bonds they would be unable to escape. Wiggenweld Potion to wake up the people and creatures he tranquilised and finally the final Vial contained Draught of the Living Death, the same powerful sleeping potion he put on the darts in his tranquiliser gun.

The playing cards were a little easier to explain, they were for helping to destroy evidence. Runes were a subject that all Witchers were very good at by necessity. The playing cards Harry carried on him all contained some verity of runic formula on them, mostly of the explosive kind. After he was done getting what he needed out of the creature before him, Harry would need to make sure that there was no trace of his activities left behind, or at least not enough that what happened could be traced back to him.

Green eyes narrowed in focus as he filled the first needle with Weakening Solution and injected 'James Wilson', the Confusing Concoction quickly followed as did the Veritaserum. Filling the next needle with Wiggenwald potion Harry injected his subject and calmly waited for whatever James Wilson, or whatever his real name was, to wake up. conciousness was quick to return. James' eyes fluttered twice before opening completely revealing both eyes to be unfocused and blank, a common occurrence for someone under as many different potions as he was, Harry decided to get straight to the point of the matter.

"Do you sell human organs and blood, dried or otherwise?" The dark haired Witcher inquired, James looked at him blankly for a second.

"Yes, I sell both." The creature answered with a nod of it's head.

"Are you here alone?" Harry questioned eyes hard.

"Yes."

"What kind of creature are you?" The third question was asked and answered just as promptly as the first. 

"I am an Each-Uisge," James answered eyes glazed over completely.

"Who is involved in the organ trafficking?" This question took longer to answer.

"Kathleen, Marcus and Robert." James reluctantly answered the question, the Veritaserum was wearing off, Harry didn't bother hurrying up instead choosing to just inject the Each-Uisge again retuning a completely glazed look to his eyes.

"Only the four of you?" Harry inquired wanting clarification on the matter.

"No." The answer was quick and to the point, that also tended to be the problem with Veritaserum the one under the influence only answered the questions asked they did not elaborate on their answers unless questioned very specifically. The fact that the Each-Uisge said no meant there were more people involved he just didn't know how many and what their names were.

"How many people are involved in the organ trafficking." The border question should help get a larger answer.

"I don't know."

Or not.

"Then who would know?" Harry questioned his patience starting to grown thin.

"Robert would know." James answered eyes starting to focus again, Harry just added more Veritaserum, sure the Each-Uisge would likely become brain-dead after the questioning was over but the Witcher didn't plan on letting James live long after they were done so it wasn't like he would be suffering for long.

"What does Robert look like as a human?" Harry asked, now they were starting to get somewhere.

"A little under six feet tall, red hair, bronze skin, likes to wear bright clothes, scar on his cheekbone." James answered immediately the Veritaserum completely holding his mind once more.

"And how does he look like when a Each-Uisge?" Harry asked, looking down at the soon to be dead creature.

"He doesn't." James answered, once more doing so as soon as the question was asked.

"Then what is he?"

"A Cynocephalus," Harry sighed so both types were involved, wonderful. When this got back to the Ministry of Magic it wasn't going to do either Each-Uisge or Cynocephalus any favours when it came time for people to try and pass new laws.

"What does Robert look like when transformed?" Harry asked, eyes riveted on the captive Each-Uisge.

"Dogs head, his body expands slightly and is more muscular, keeps the scar." James answered his words starting to slur, it wouldn't be to long now before his mind just turned to mush from the overload of potions in his system.

"Where can I find them and when?" Harry asked his final question drawing Ivory as he did so.

"A small trailer around twenty minutes out of Liverpool, just off of the 580 a small lot that's overgrown down a dirt trailer. They are there every day except Sundays." James answered his voice getting lower as he did so, Harry looked down at the Each-Uisge before pointing Ivory at the creatures head.

"Thanks for the help." Harry replied pulling the trigger, the slide pulled back and ejected the casing as the .45 bullet slammed into the skull of the creature and entered it's brain, killing James instantly. Green eyes watched dispassionately as the corpse transformed back into it's natural state, the head elongated into a horses, with scales rather than hair teeth filed to points and hands tipped by claws. Legs elongated and feet became hooves, knees twisting around and becoming reverse jointed.

Harry didn't bother sparing the cooling corpse a look as he went about his business ripping the potions cabinet open and finding what he needed, the ingredients he had asked for were indeed part of Veritaserum but when combined with Ashwinder Eggs they also formed a very unstable explosive compound. Grabbing what he needed the Witcher ground the ingredients into a thick paste in a large mortar and pestle before spreading it over anything else he knew was flammable, including the corpse itself. Though not exactly the best burnable marital he wanted James' corpse to be as unidentifiable as possible and hopefully the heat would also be enough to burn away the vast majority of the potions in the Each-Uisge's body.

Grabbing his playing cards Harry finished the final piece of his macabre work. A marker in his left hand the dark haired Witcher linked the explosives to the joker cards using another rune and stuck them to every surface that he found, carefully laying them over the unstable mixture he had made earlier. Packing up what was left of his needles and darts Harry slipped the Joker into his pocket and made his way out of the store making sure to keep the closed sign facing the outside. Stepping back outside into Knockturn he made his way deeper into the winding side streets of the ally, if Harry was going to take on three people at once and keep the one he needed for information alive then he was going to need some new equipment. Fortunately Klaus' bar, and the Witcher armoury underneath, was well within walking distance.

Harry hummed to himself as he stepped through the gloom fingering the joker card in his pocket as walked towards the rather large building towards the end of the street. The sign outside simply read Rest and Relaxation, Bed and Breakfast. It was a strange mixture of bar, inn and armoury. It was also a place that didn't discriminate, Human, Witcher, Vampire, Werewolf, Faery, Goblin, anyone and everyone was welcome so long as they didn't start trouble and followed the house rules. Hell it wasn't strange to see a Wizard sharing a table with a Vampire and a Goblin most nights. It was also one of the few true neutral zones in England, an unofficial accord that no business would be conducted on site. If you had a problem with someone then you took it outside or the patrons, and the bartender for that matter, were likely to put both offenders down, permanently in some cases.

Walking inside Harry pulled the joker out of his pocket and sent a flash of magic through it, the card blackened instantly and a muted boom could be heard even through the sound dampening wards of the bar, well that must have been some explosion then. Slipping the now useless playing card back into his pocket Harry pulled back his hood and took a look around the familiar surroundings. Much like The Leaky Cauldron it was quite dark, though that was more by choice than by design. Vampires, Witchers and many other types of creatures could see almost as well in the dark as they did by day, and in a Vampires case they actually saw better at night.

Besides each booth had a personal light control so if you wanted more light it was perfectly possible and due to the light dampening spells outside of each booth you wouldn't even be bothering anybody else.

High ceilings more than a few runes carved throughout the various pillars that helped hold up the ceiling. They all did roughly the same thing sound dampening, light control, they were also linked to the wards that were at the start of the street, an early warning system just in case the Aurors decided for a surprise raid. Klaus had prepared well for that eventuality, after all some of what he sold was borderline illegal, not dangerous but definitely in the grey area of the law. Such as selling cups of blood, human blood fairly purchased from several Vampire owned blood banks, and the occasional hiding of a Werewolf, or other creature, that hadn't actually committed a crime but was a useful scapegoat for someone who had.

Not that the second one happened to often, and the screening process for help was closer to a full intergeneration, Veritaserum and all, than anything else but it did happen. Rest and Relaxation was also partly funded by The Witcher Academy, in exchange they had a yearly get together with other hunters in the large event hall under the building as well as an armoury off the books located on the lower levels. Treading down the stairs he knew very well Harry slipped around the first pillar and onto his stool near the bar a quick flick of his fingers igniting the candle next to him, a minor use of Igni to be sure but a useful one.

Reaching back into his pocket the dark haired Witcher drew out the case for his contact lenses and pulled them out placing one in each side of the case. He'd clean them properly when he got home for now it was more important to store them and talk to Klaus about having the armoury opened up, sure he had a 'key', for lack of a better term, and could do it himself but it was common courtesy to let The Gunsmith know he'd be making use of the room. The only times Harry hadn't done so was when he was in a real hurry or had a chance to call ahead and let Klaus know in advance.

Since the older man wasn't behind the bar it most likely meant he was off delivering some food to a patron somewhere inside the establishment, that could mean upstairs in one of the rooms or on the ground floor. Either way Harry wasn't about to go looking for him, Klaus would come back to the bar sooner or later it was all just a matter of patience and if nothing else Harry's training had taught him that. The Witcher turned his thoughts inward, now there were other questions he needed to answer, like how he was going to take on a likely mixture of Cynocephalus' and Each-Uisge's. Three on one were something that was usual in his line of work but that could easily be overcome by the correct application of strategy.

Firstly he only needed Robert alive, the other two were deadmen walking. Which meant he had to identify Robert, work out how to capture him and then eliminate the other two. Well that last part was probably going to be the easiest, considering it was still only three in the afternoon he could probably get this part of the job done today if he was quick about it. He would need a binocular of some kind, one that could do night vision and another for infrared. Best time to hit them would be as the group was leaving that trailer, maybe wound one and let the others panic then kill them and take Robert when they came out to help their friend. It would also be a good idea to booby trap the area, just to make sure that they couldn't just run away.

"Harry," The sound of his name brought the Witcher out of his inner thoughts and back into the realm of reality. The one speaking was an older man seemingly in his early forties, black hair that was cut short sprinkled with white and the neat beard around his mouth was beginning to follow suit, creating the salt and pepper look. His eyes were blue and seemed far older than his body, not an unsurprising thing in Vampires and Witchers, or any race that tended to live far longer than humans. Klaus was wearing his typical dress for tending the bar, a pair of boots brown pants and a white shirt, a small smile was on the older man's face, though his teeth were not revealed.

Klaus was after all a vampire, and in vampire culture baring your fangs at someone was considered to be a challenge, as such when smiling most, not all but most, vampires never revealed their teeth. Harry had told the man numerous times that he didn't care if he showed his teeth or not but it never seemed to take, old habits he guessed and at almost four hundred years old Klaus was more than entitled to a few old habits.

"Good to see you again Klaus," Harry replied shaking the older man's weathered hand feeling the callouses on it. "I'm just sorry that it's not a social call this time," The Witcher added with a slight grimace making the older man nod sagely.

"That's fine, just make sure to come down for a pint next time and we'll call it even." Klaus replied slapping the younger man on the back as Harry stood from his chair. "Shall I assume you need to use downstairs?" The vampire asked getting a nod in return he held out his hand towards the back rooms and the staircase Harry knew was out there. "You know your way around, good hunting Harry."

"Thanks Klaus," The Witcher replied walking through the door and out into the kitchen, it was a homely place but it also wouldn't have anyone inside for at least another hour when the staff started to arrive. Klaus took care of the orders by himself during the day but due to the nature of the bar being one of the few places that Magical Creatures could drink in peace they tended to get very busy of an evening. As such even with his supernatural speed Klaus wasn't able to run both the bar and the kitchen, Harry had more than a few meals from the bar and could proudly say that their Chef, a Succubus by the name of Velana, was one of the best cooks around.

By passing the kitchen the Witcher took a left and walked down stairs into the basement and was greeted by four doors, the first door was to the kitchen storeroom, the second was for the alcohol, third was the event hall and finally the armoury. Placing his hand against the door Harry drew a series of Runes each one part of the unlocking series, if someone else had tried to do this and gotten it wrong the first time nothing would happen. The second they would get an electric shock, then the protections would activate if they tried a third time and BBQ them with a powerful fire spell in addition to alerting every Witcher in Britain that the London Armoury was under attack.

Adding the final rune, Gebo the Gift Rune, had he just pushed the door open instead all he would have found was a broom cupboard, the door opened with a sharp click and Harry quickly pushed it open revealing a large room that measured roughly one hundred square meters. While it was called the Armoury the name was actually kind of deceiving as in actuality the room was far more than just that. Yes it did indeed house many weapons, as the dozens of weapon racks attested to, however it also was the place that the Gateway rested.

Gateways were a very old invention, created before the advent of the Apparition Nexus. Gateways were all interlinked with one another, every Gateway could access every other Gateway as long as they were on the same network, networks the size of the country they were housed in meant that Gateways were a very handy way of getting from Point A to Point B. They also let the user move further than that of Apparition, Apparition allowed The Witch or Wizard using it to travel great distances however it was very limited in its own way. While usable from anywhere Apparition could only move a Witch or Wizard as far as their magic could allow and the current record for that was three hundred and fifty kilometres.

Apparition was far more convent, that much was certainly true, but in some ways it was also much more limited. There were after all reasons that Gateways and Floo Travel existed despite the advent of the Apparition Nexus being created. In fact Harry would use one of the Gateways to get to Liverpool, but firstly he was going to need weapons. Witchers were, however, very clear on how they labelled their weapons so Harry could quite clearly see the racks that he needed, namely the ones that said Vision Equipment, Sniper Rifles, Grenades, and Mines.

The world had changed, warfare had changed. That was an inescapable truth and while it was true that a silver sword was still an integral weapon for any wishing to ply the Witchers trade it was also true that other weapons had developed enough for them to play a vital part in combat. Witchers rarely made their own bombs anymore unless they were trying to create a very specific effect that would help them against a certain creature, most chose to rely on mass produced explosives that were readily produced such as Fragmentation and Incendiary Grenades.

How ever that was not the only was in which things had changed, when they began to become far more portable and reliable guns had also become a vital part of any Witchers arsenal. A handgun even replacing the steel sword of old, the advantages of the gun simply being far higher than that of the blade. Not to say that swords were useless to them, far from it when a monster had a powerful regeneration factor the sword was the preferred weapon as its wounds were so much larger and more difficult to heal. However against human sized targets and creatures that had a close to human form, such as Cynocephalus' and Each-Uisge's, guns were often more useful.

Even when transformed both Cynocephalus' and Each-Uisge's were not that much stronger than an ordinary human. True they were more physically capable than most normal humans, the adult human male for example could lift around one and a half times their body weight the average Cynocephalus' could lift around two and a half times their body weight. While Each-Uisge's had around the same level of physical strength as humans but made up for this by being able to make their skin become adhesive, in addition to their scales providing a kind of natural armour, as well as the claws and natural weapons they sported.

But other than the obvious advantages they sported over humans neither Cynocephalus' or Each-Uisge's were actually all that much more durable. A bullet to the head, or a few bullets to the body, would kill a normal human, the same could be said of both a Cynocephalus or a Each-Uisge. No silver even required, a normal lead bullet would do just fine if put in the right place and Harry was quite confident that he could put a bullet in the right place, or several bullets for that matter.

While he had never shied away from physical combat, Letho had made sure of that, it was also true that the dark haired Witcher had always been better at using a gun than he had a sword. Even at close range Harry's reaction speed let him easily keep up with the movements of others while keeping careful not of how much ammo he had left and exactly where he needed to fire next.

Still he really should practise his swordplay more, the world may have moved on. Most Witchers weren't able to pay the bills just by being Witchers anymore after all and those that tried tended to be quite poor. As such they could no longer train all day every day like their predecessors but Harry knew that he should be able to at least fit in some time in his day to spend just a little more time on sword work than he used to. Shaking the future thoughts aside, the Witcher focused on the job at hand, picking the right weapons to make sure the upcoming engagement was so unfairly stacked in his favour it was laughable.

That was after all ancient Witcher battle doctrine, seize every unfair advantage you possibly could. There was, after all, no such thing as a fair fight, no good Witcher should ever get involved in a fair fight if an unfair fight was an option. When Witcher's really had to go to town on their enemies, be that because they were outnumbered or simply due to the sheer power of whatever they were facing, they didn't fight dirty.

No they did things that made fighting dirty look good.

Grabbing one of the bags located near the entrance Harry pulled the door behind him closed, he didn't exactly want someone else wandering in while he was working after all. Use of the Armoury was allowed to all Witchers but there were some conditions that came with it, firstly all guns were to be serviced by their user before being returned, the user was to pay for the mines or traps that they used and finally Witchers that wished to make use of the Armoury paid a monthly fee to The Academy. As it was much cheaper than buying the guns themselves most Witchers tended to make use of the Armoury rather than having a load of weapons and potentially lethal traps just lying around at home.

Harry quickly grabbed the first thing that caught his eye off of the Vision Equipment, a monocular that had an infrared function. Then followed on by grabbing a night vision scope for the rifle he would need to pick up. Placing both inside the bag Harry moved on to the next rack, Sniper Rifles the Witcher already knew what he wanted and plucked it straight off the dark steel hooks with scarcely a though. A Heckler and Koch MSG-90 and three twenty round magazines for good measure, Harry knew he shouldn't really need even one of those but it paid to be careful. A suppressor for the rifle was also thrown into the bag, last thing he wanted the organ traffickers to know was where exactly they were being shot from.

Next came the mines, a pair of Bouncy Betty Anti-Personal Mines and two Claymores for good measure, it was Witcher battle doctrine to always have any advantage you could grab on the field of combat. Mines were an equal opportunity weapon, when set correctly though mines could quite possibly be the best trap anyone could make. Finishing up his impromptu shopping trip Harry closed in on the ammo boxes filling the first magazine with 7.62 NATO rounds and the other two with non-lethal rubber bullets.

The girl, Kathleen, would serve as good bait for the other two if he could get her to start screaming. Cynocephalus' were known to be extremely loyal to their friends, Robert would no doubt come running of he shot her in the kneecap and let her scream a little. Then all he would need to do was change magazines over after shooting the other two in the legs and put all three to sleep with rubber bullets. From their the rest was simple find out which one was Robert, get the information he needed and then dispose of them. It wasn't the best plan he'd ever come up with but it had quite a high chance of success, as did most plans that used the enemies weakness', and loyalty could be made into a weakness under the right circumstances, against them.

Walking over to another rack, one quite clearly labelled C4, Harry grabbed a couple of blocks in addition to a pair of incendiary and flashbang grenades from the Grenade rack. C4 was always useful and the blocks would come in handy when disposing of evidence, as would the incendiary grenades, the flashbangs would be good for blinding the group if the other plan didn't work out.

Picking up the bag once more Harry looked over at the Gateway, the stone panel before it being the

destination select.

Liverpool here he came.

 **XXX**

Harry looked back down his sight with tired eyes, anyone who thought being a sniper was _**anything**_ like Call of Duty could kiss his ass. Being a sniper wasn't about stopping at a designated location and firing a few bullets then moving on, no it was more laying down in a very uncomfortable position for hours on end until your target made themselves known.

All things considered being a sniper was a lot like permanently being inside a dentists waiting room. It was uncomfortable, you wondered where exactly everything around you was and why it was there and then, every now and then, someone would try to kill you.

The trick, naturally, was to kill them first.

Finding the hideout hadn't been that hard, for all his worries about how accurate 'James' had been, it turned out that the Each-Uisge actually gave very good direction. Not two hundred and fifty meters away sat a stainless steel caravan with several attachments out the back resembling greenhouses. If Harry had to guess they probably contained human organs that were being dried out for whatever reason and maybe some drugs, no one said that this group had just one source of income after all.

It hadn't been hard to make sure this was the right place either, the Muggle Repelling Ward had been a big give away. It also meant that a Wizard was likely involved, Each-Uisge and Cynocephalus' were known for many things, there ability with Wards were not one of them. On the off chance that someone came down the long dirt road to the caravan, an accomplice maybe? Harry had set up his Bouncing Betty's half way down the road. Maybe it would kill whoever was in the car that could come by, maybe it wouldn't, but they would sure as hell make enough noise to lure the three people inside out into the open.

Hell there was also the chance that the Bouncing Betty's would kill some innocent muggle that just happened to wander a little to close and set one of them off. Mines were considered to be an equal opportunity weapon after all, equal chance to kill your enemy, someone else, or yourself if you forgot where you left it.

Harry could see the three moving around inside through the windows, he had already picked out Kathleen. The woman who would most likely be shot in the knee before the day was over, oh that was going to be painful. That said she was also helping sell organs from what were most likely not volunteers so he wasn't going to lose any sleep over it. Not that Harry just thought of the people inside of the caravan as relentless monsters either, made life easier if he thought like that but it usually wasn't true.

It was quite possible that the people working inside of the caravan were perfectly nice and desperately needed the money to help their sick mother or send their brothers and sisters through school. It was certainly hard for creatures to get a job in Britain after all, what with the Ministry of Magic's blatant attempts to drive them all out, or extinct. But they also made it hard for the creatures leave as well since they provided a much needed source of cheap labour.

It really was hypocritical on their part, they didn't want any creatures to have important jobs, or steady ones for that matter, claiming that they were untrustworthy due to the criminal activity many were involved in. When the only reason many creatures were involved in criminal activity was due to the fact that they couldn't hold down any form of steady employment due to the Ministry of Magic itself. But they couldn't leave with ease either because God knew it would be a horrible shame if the Purebloods actually had to pay someone a fair wage to do an honest day's work. Rather than creatures who would work for half as much as a Wizard or Witch due to their only other choice of employment being criminal.

A vicious cycle if Harry had ever seen one.

Turing his attention back to the caravan Harry saw the door open and Kathleen step out, his eye narrowed and breathing slowed, setting up the shot. Her knee was his target, unfortunately right now it didn't matter if she was a good person or a horrible one. He was being paid to do a job and, unfortunately for her, this young woman was on the wrong end of that job.

Harry pulled the trigger.

Time to go to work.

 **Chapter Two- End.**


	3. Chapter 3

**The Witcher**

 **Chapter Three: I Wanna Learn How To Do That!**

 **Authors Note-**

I really have no excuse to why this took so long to get out. It was sitting at 7000 words for about two weeks since the last chapter was put out. So that makes it about six months since this really should have come out.

There are a whole bunch of parts of this chapter that I'm not completely happy with, especially the last third of the chapter. Honestly I kind of forced myself there simply because I felt like I needed to write something or else it was just never going to happen.

So love it or hate it is up to you but I do feel like there was a decent slip of quality in this chapter, hopefully I can make up for that in the next one.

Or maybe there's nothing wrong with this one and I'm just being overly critical, you decide.

Also I completely forgot about Kingsley, you'll understand what I mean about half way through I'm sure.

 **Authors Note End-**

Harry Potter's head stopped spinning just as he stepped out of the green fire and into The Ministry of Magic Atrium. It would not be a step to far to say that he hated magical travel, there was a reason he preferred driving a car over taking pre created Portkeys everywhere, well besides the fact that it was cheaper. The only kind that didn't earn his ire was Gateway travel, as it felt just like stepping through an open door, none of the bloody spinning and twisting that came with other forms of magical travel. Shaking his head the Witcher observed his surroundings.

The floor was white marble, pillars that were reminiscent of Greek architecture holding up a ceiling that had various murals painted upon it, most of Wizards in various stages of spell casting. Twelve other fire places roared around him, Harry knew for a fact that they burned day and night as a way for Floo travel to be uninterrupted into and out of The Ministry of Magic at all times. Green eyes were drawn to The Fountain of Magical Brethren, a waste of tax payer money if there ever was one.

Standing at around twelve meters in hight at its zenith. The golden statue depicted, as the name implied, 'Magical Brethren'. Standing at the bottom was a House Elf that looked halfway between cowering and hopeful, standing just a little above a Goblin eyes narrowed into a glare and mouth down turned a Galleon clenched between it's fingers. The third statue was that of a Centaur, chest bared looking away from the centre of the statue with a scowl, bow pulled back and arrow ready to fire at an enemy that did not exist. Standing a good two meters above any of the other statues, on a dais all their own, was a Witch and, standing slightly taller, a Wizard wands pointing away from each other, and, if one looked closer, towards the creatures, water poured from the ends of their wands as it did from the tip of the Centaurs arrow, one of the Goblins fingers and the House Elf's ears.

Harry felt disgust at seeing it the same way he did every time, while it was a little subtler than some of the things he'd seen The Fountain of Magical Brethren did represent quite clearly how some Wizards and Witches felt towards Magical Creatures. Namely that they were below humans and human rights, not that England was alone in that belief, far from it. Most of Magical Europe felt that way, though there were exceptions to every rule. Magical Germany for example lost most of their Pureblood houses fighting for Grindelwald in World War Two. As such Half-Bloods and Muggleborns took over most of the positions of Government, which had naturally tipped the balance of power significantly. Due to this they had created quite a progressive Government with Magical Creature Rights an actual concern overseen by a committee of both Wizards and Witches but also representatives chosen from various communities of different Creatures.

Apparently the system was working so well for Germany that Creature attacks were down by almost sixty percent from pre-war levels. As unlike most of Europe Germany actually listened to the concerns of their Creatures and acted to help them and resolve their problems instead of dismissing their needs as unimportant as, usually, happened in Britain. It was no surprise that most Magical Creatures that left a European country these days attempted to immigrate to Germany or Russia.

Russia was in much the same position as Germany, though for different reasons, Magical Russia had gone through the same Communist Revolution as Muggle Russia, this naturally led to a lot of Pureblood lines going extinct when they refused to give up their gold 'for the people'. When the Magical USSR collapsed, around a year before the Muggle USSR, the Government positions had to be filled again, mostly by Muggleborn's, though the Half-Blood's did have a prominent seating as well. This led to many of the same reforms as Germany went through years before, as a matter of fact due to many European Countries disliking both Germany and Russia's 'new' stance on Magical Creatures the two countries now had very close political relations, at least Magically.

Harry had no real idea on their political relations on a Muggle level.

Harry himself had been to Russia a few times, the same could be said for Germany. Letho had been born in Russia, or, to be more specific, he had been born in an area that eventually become part of Russia. They had taken a 'field trip' of sorts there for six months during their two years together, Harry had picked up the language quite easily with some magical assistance, in addition to a taste for, as stereotypical as it was, Vodka.

You could say what you wanted about the Russians they made great Vodka.

He also picked up a liking for the Russian AKS-74U close combat assault rifle. The AKS-74U was a derivative of the AKS-74, yet another evolution from, what is still considered today as the most durable assault rifle of all time, the AK-47. The AKS-74U was meant to be used in closer quarters than it's larger counter parts containing a removable stock, much like the AKS-74, though the AKS-74U's stock as also slightly shortened as was it's barrel making the gun more manoeuvrable indoors. However unlike a sub-machine gun, which the AKS-74U was closely sized to, the 74U still took the 5.45x39mm rounds like it's larger cousin making the bullets a bit more deadly than the 9mm rounds in something like a Heckler and Koch MP5.

That said, as just about every competent user of firearms knew, as long as you could hit your target just about any gun could get the job done.

Another plus for the weapon was that it was able to be disassembled and reassembled very quickly and just needed a good oil and tune up every couple of weeks to just keep on firing, none of the legendary durability of the AK series had been lost in the AKS-74U. Shaking his head Harry pulled his thoughts away from the gun, much more pleasant than the thoughts he already had about the Ministry of Magic. Grabbing the briefcase he'd brought with him up off the ground the Witcher strode forward, after his interrogation of Robert, which had gone just the way he'd hoped, Harry had gone back home and gotten ready for what came next.

Tactical Assault.

Black boots with steel soles, usually used for hiking but made a kick hurt like hell to, mottled grey pants and shirt, over which he wore what was informally known as a Witcher Special, actually named a Kevlar Weave Chainmail Vest with Integrated Camouflage. A unique type of bulletproof vest, while it did contain standard Kevlar in between the kevlar weave was a layer of chainmail meant to stop a sword strike and then a layer of ceramic plating, something to take the edge off, and hopefully stop, an armour piercing round another layer of kevlar was over the plating to stop it rubbing against a shirt.

The vest also had a runic sequence on it that made it change colour to mimic its surroundings, made it very useful when he needed to hide. Ivory took a pride of place upon his right leg instead of being hidden behind his back, his fingers constantly brushing the grip as his arms swung back and forth. A pair of gauntlets rested on both hands coverer everything from the back of his hands to just before Harry's elbow in steel, just in case he needed to get in close and fight someone sword to sword, didn't happen to often but it did happen. It was also for that exact reason that his back carried a silver blade, which was also why he was able to walk straight through the middle of The Ministry of Magic easily, everyone gave him a wide berth. While Harry really didn't enjoy the whole fear aspect of being a Witcher it didn't change the fact that it usually made it every easy to walk through a gaggle of Witches and Wizards, they parted before Witchers like the red sea before Moses, who himself was apparently a powerful Wizard.

Though Harry did admit that he had no way of actually knowing if Moses was a Wizard or legitimately Holy. History books would say whatever the Government wanted them to after all and there was a lot of bad blood between The Church and Magical Beings so it was entirely possible that Moses was recorded as a Wizard just to stick it to The Church. While most Magical History books were quite factual when it came to the subject of The Church, or almost anything related to religion for that matter, with the exception of Paganism in some cases, they were almost as unreliable as any other book.

Magical History liked to say that The Witch Hunts that took place from as early as 1450 till their end around 1750 did very little to the magical population. That was a lie told to protect the magical community from the fact that almost one hundred thousand witches and wizards, along with a fair chunk of Sorcerers and Sorceress were killed. Not a huge figure by the modern day standards of population but back in those years it was around a full third of the magical population of Europe at that time. Not something that The Ministry of Magic liked to admit happened and as such had history white washed in an attempt to make Muggles seem less threatening to Wizards and Witches.

Today the magical population of Europe was around one point five million. With the total number of Wizards and Witches around the world was about five million, give or take half a million either way. Which considering the fact that the total known population of the non-magical world was six billion people meant that Witches and Wizards were outnumbered about one thousand two hundred to one against muggles.

The Ministry of Magic liked to pretend that they had nothing to worry about when it came to muggles, because they had magic which trumped technology, which it did a lot of the time. However that only really happened because muggles had no idea what they were dealing with, if muggles knew what they were dealing with then they were a real threat, in fact they were the magical worlds biggest threat, because with the increases in technology that were happening they could not hide forever.

Harry had actually had the chance to observe a Wizard fight against a muggle that knew about magic and exactly what he was up against. The man's name was Artur, one of Letho's contacts, the Wizard had been taken apart in short order. Not to say that the Wizard in question was not skilled, he most certainly was however the main problem with magical folk was that they were incredibly inept at dealing with things outside of their frame of reference, things like guns and mines for example were things that most Wizards and Witches only knew about theoretically and usually had no idea how to respond to them. Another weakness was the fact that most, not all but most, Witches and Wizards had no idea what to do if they were ever caught in hand to hand combat, not that they were alone in that most normal people had no idea how to handle themselves in a fight past swing for the fences either.

The Ministry of Magic liked to pretend that muggles were not a threat to convince themselves and others that they would be able to hide forever, something that was impossible. But some of them seemed to believe it was possible because they didn't keep up with advances in technology and one day technology would outstrip magic's ability to hide them. When that happened it was anyone's guess as to what would happen. Considering how long he could live for potentially Harry could well see that day come to pass, but in order to pretend that it would never happen the Ministy tried to convince themselves that magic would forever be sciences better and they used white washed history like the Witch Hunts to do just that.

Of course they actually did have a point in quite a few cases.

Back then the common folk and priests were just as inept at finding and killing magic users as the history books described. The Holy Inquisition and the organisation known as Witch Hunters that were formed after the Inquisition had been disbanded were rather better at their jobs. These were people who were actually trained to find witches and wizards then kill them. According to the history books at The Academy these two groups had shown themselves to be terrifyingly good at what they did, most were also either Zealots or complete Sociopath's as well if what he had read was correct.

In fact the history books at The Academy had actually drawn several parallels between The Inquisition and The Witch Hunters tactics as well as those of Witchers at the time, possibly meaning that one of their own had taught them how to hunt down and kill magic users. Which naturally didn't help their reputation at the time when magical folk began to notice the parallels between hunting patterns themselves. Harry shook the thoughts off, they were not going to help him today and he could think more on magical history later.

It wasn't just for normalcy and the possibility of making himself and Letho filthy rich that became a history major, he was actually quite interested in it and very good at it.

Walking straight through the atrium Harry quickly arrived at the front desk, the young man sitting behind it looked like he was about to drop dead from fear. His face was pasty white, eyes wide, it was a common reaction from Wizards that saw a fully armoured witcher heading straight for them. Hell Harry could see some Auors in the crowed doing a very sloppy job of flanking him just in case he started some trouble. Taking a quick look at the guards name tag, Nicolas, Harry put his briefcase on the table before the man, it was standard procedure after all.

Of course his briefcase wasn't exactly normal, specially charmed to not only be feather light but also contain seven separate compartments within. It had cost Harry a pretty penny but it was more than worth it to be able to move large amounts of weaponry without having to carry it awkwardly in a suitcase or the like. The Witcher forced a smile to his face as he looked down at the man over the counter, the Wizards and Witches around him starting to galvanise into action once more and head back about their business as the initial shock of a heavily armed Witcher being in their midst began to wear off. Though they all still kept a wary eye on him and the Aurors were still attempting to hide, very clumsily Harry would like to add. There were six in total. One hiding directly to his left, another the same on his right, two more directly in front of him on forty five degree angles, the final two mirroring that from behind.

But it was a very bad set up, hell if he just dropped to the ground the moment spells started flying instead of trying to block like most Wizards then the Aurors would be in great danger of just hitting each other. Wizards, and Witches for that matter, were not particularly good at working outside their personal frame of reference. The idea of Friendly Fire was mostly lost on them as was good positioning so they didn't hit each other. Sure Senior Aurors usually pulled it off just fine, but these guys, who were likely rookies if the fact they were on patrol inside the atrium said anything, seemingly couldn't do it to save their own lives. There were times that Harry really did wish that the Magical World took some cues from the Muggle one, cell phones for example would have been a much better form of communication than owls, proper group tactics was another thing that The Department of Magical Law Enforcement could stand to learn from their Muggle counterparts.

"Hello I would like to speak with Amelia Bones, The Head of The Department for Magical Law Enforcement. Could you please tell her that the Witcher she asked for in regards to an incident in London is here to see her?" Harry inquired politely, keeping the very false smile plastered to his face. It was usually the best way to talk to someone who was quite clearly scared out of their mind, be polite, speak lowly and be very clear about why you were there. It was just Harry's own manner not to mention his name, the moment anyone heard Harry Potter it was all Brother of the Boy-Who-Lived this and 'It's such a shame you don't have real magic' that along with, occasionally, 'We are so sorry that you can't be like your brother', it got tiring very quickly.

Especially when most of the people who said those things didn't mean a dammed word of it, such as Lucius Malfoy who had the nerve to say that it was unfortunate that he didn't have magic before going on to say that it was most likely because his mother was, in the man's own words, 'of inferior stock'.

It had taken every scrap of discipline that Vesimir and Letho had pounded into him for Harry to control his urge to break Malfoy's face in. Fortunately for the Malfoy patriarch, who was most likely not expecting to actually be called to account for his words by way of mortal combat, the Witcher had nodded his head and, like the situation demanded, thanked the man for his words. Then expressed his condolences that Lucius Malfoy had such a weak mind that he was able to be kept under the Imperius Curse for years at a time before inquiring if he was seeking the correct professional help as after such a long exposure he was surely not as mentally stable as he was before.

The look on Lucius Malfoy's face upon hearing that had been priceless, clearly he was not used to being insulted back, especially by those he felt beneath him. The icing on that cake was that Lucius could not draw his wand or else he would have lost a lot of face in front of many very powerful people. The man hadn't approached him again at The Ministry of Magic's Yuletide Ball for three years since that incident, win win as far as Harry was concerned.

After all next time he might have had enough to drink, which would mean Alcohol poisoning and possible death for a normal person, to actually start a fight with the arsehole. Not that Harry thought that knocking a few of Lucius Malfoy's teeth out would be a bad thing, oh no the thought of being able to do that was actually quite nice but he would be damned before he gave that bastard another reason to try and increase restrictions on Half-Breeds and Creatures. Which is exactly what an attack on his would do, especially if it was done in front of an audience. Normal Half-Breeds were bad enough but the older brother of The-Boy-Who-Lived attacking a known 'philanthropist', and it made Harry sick referring to Malfoy as that even in his own head it was like insulting every actual philanthropist in the world.

An action like that would mean major repercussions, after all if a Half-Breed/Mutant from a respected Pureblood house couldn't be trusted not to give in to his 'Baser Instincts' when he'd had a proper Wizarding upbringing then how could they trust others? It would mean tighter restrictions on Creatures and Half-Breeds, not to mention Witchers who would receive extremely bad press for such an action. In addition to the new restrictions that Malfoy would undoubtedly try to push through should that choice been taken it would have also backlashed on his father weakening James Potter's position in the Wizengamot and by extension his Godfather Sirius Black in addition to others.

So, unfortunately, he would likely never be able to cave in Lucius Malfoy's face in at a banquet or a Yuletide Ball. But one day the Death Eater would slip up and then, he would be waiting, sword in hand, to remind the Pureblood exactly why every rational Wizard and Witch had a healthy dose of fear mixed with the respect they held for Witchers. Hell Wizards actually had a Nursery Rhyme that taught their children to at least wary of Witchers, not that Harry hadn't heard a slightly different version from some creatures.

Wolves are sleeping amidst the trees.

Bats all a-swaying in the breeze.

But one Muggle lies anxious wide awake.

Fearing all manner of Ghouls, Hags and Wraiths.

Birds are silent for the night.

Cow's turned in as daylight dies.

But one Wizard lies anxious wide awake.

For the Witcher.

Brave and Bold.

Paid in Coin of Gold.

He'll chop and slice you.

He'll cut and dice you.

He'll eat you up whole.

Eat. You. Whole.

Entire societies had various rhymes that were built around that, around fear of his kind. Anything that had it's own nursery rhyme warning people about it was probably something that you really should be wary about. He doubted Lucius Malfoy saw him as a threat, one day the man was going to regret that and Harry knew he was going to enjoy that day, very, very much. Of course there were also several other reason he had not tried to kill the man out of hand yet as well.

Firstly among them was that Malfoy Manor was less a Manor House and more a Fortress masquerading as a Manor House. Layers of wards that would take months upon months to break through without help and even if he made it past those the manor itself there would no doubt be countless other defences in place to give intruders a 'warm welcome', one Wizard's house that he had been charged with breaking into actually tried to barbecue him with a high powered Incendo based Ward. Somehow he doubted the defences around Malfoy Manor would be half that nice. Just breaking into the place would take months, if not years, to set up and there was no guarantee that he would be able to catch Lucius that way even if he did managed to get in.

The Second reason was more political in nature, Lucius was one of the many Death Eaters that had escaped Azkaban and like all the other powerful Death Eaters that had managed to get out he was currently involved in a power struggle to control what was left of the faction. With Avery and Nott being his main two competitors in the power department for control over The Death Eaters. So long as those three kept infighting among themselves it was much easier for his father and the others to cut off Pro-Death Eater legislation from passing. Granted sometimes it did still pass but for the most part his fathers job was easier with Lucius Malfoy alive than dead.

Voldemort had made something of a mistake when assembling his Death Eaters, his desire was that the strongest would rise to the top and become part of his inner circle and help lead the group. Now that he was gone and the 'throne', as it were, was open. The same people that had schemed, backstabbed and murdered their way into the Inner Circle were locked in combat with each other for that same throne. Vastly reducing their efficacy since he had set up no clear line of succession should he die, or be rendered into a state where he could not lead them.

That was the problem with creating a council that consisted of people who were willing to cheat, steal and kill their way to the top. When the person controlling them was gone they would be to busy fighting each other to be anywhere near as effective as they were before.

Finally Lucius was simply easier to control while he was out in the open instead of hiding in the shadows. Lucius Malfoy out in the open was someone who could be kept tabs on. If he took a shot at Malfoy and failed to kill him, which considering an assault would either need to take place at Malfoy Manor or The Ministry of Magic was more than possible. Then Lucius would go underground and if that happened it would be much harder to keep him from pursuing his other agendas, something much easier to do as long as he was in sight.

The Guard spoke brining Harry out of his inner thoughts and back to the present. The Auror's were still as ineffectually positioned as before, though thankfully they were smart enough to have positioned themselves so that if they needed to try and hit him the Guard only had a minimal chance of being hit by spell fire.

"Of course sir, please take the f-forth elevator on your left, sixth floor." The Witcher was bought out of his thoughts by Nicolas' words, green eyes zeroed in on the security guard. The man's colour was returning and he'd only stuttered once, good recovery as far as things like that went. While he had praised the Auror's earlier for making sure they would not hit Nicolas should spells start flying they still hadn't repositioned themselves enough to completely avoid shooting each other should everything go to hell. But that really wasn't his problem, though he should probably make a mention of it to his father that was really something The Department should fix.

It would just be embarrassing if new Auror's managed to take each other out in addition to the enemy.

"Thank you." Harry replied with a nod, before taking his briefcase and moving off towards the elevator that had been indicated. Nicolas hadn't checked him for weapons, that was a mistake, sure they could see his pistol and sword but that was definitely not all he was carrying, merely what was obvious. Not counting what was in the briefcase, Harry had a pair of large knives strapped to his lower back, another smaller one in each boot, both weighted for throwing and another seven knives that had been made exclusively for throwing strapped to his person.

In addition to that there was also the pair of stiletto knives he had hidden, one strapped to the inside of each thigh. They were certainly not easy to reach but if he was disarmed and taken prisoner then they were easy enough to get to by ripping a hole in his pocket and reaching inside. There was a reason that professionals did strip and cavity search of their prisoners, far to easy to hide weapons on your person if you knew what you were doing. Fortunately professionals were few and far between so that rarely happened, not that Harry had much experience with being a prisoner. The only times it had happened was during training in a controlled environment, never in the field.

That either said very good things about his skill level or very poor things about his opponents, probably a bit of both really.

Thankfully the elevator was already at ground level stepping inside Harry did have to wonder why any muggle technology that Wizards adopted had to be locked into the turn of the century instead of more modern, when they were actually very much improved. Hitting the button for the sixth floor Harry idly gazed at the atrium as the doors closed.

"Hold the door!" The words were yelled, their owners voice sounded like a mix between bells and laughter, Harry knew it well, very, very well as a matter of fact. Placing his hand out the Witcher pushed the doors back open, the elevator that the Ministry sported did not have a door open button. A red haired woman slipped into the elevator with him, a few flecks of grey starting to appear, stress most likely. Whether it was from her three children or her husband Harry was not truly sure, probably a mix of both though he suspected his father was the main culprit, or maybe it was him his mother had always stressed about his choice of work after all. A small turned up noise and bright green eyes that were darting all over him, a small scar on her left cheek.

Lilly Potter reached forward and bought her eldest into a tight embrace, squeezing the, significantly taller, Potter into a hug. He'd looked okay and that was all that really mattered to the mother that didn't see her eldest anywhere near as often as she wanted to, it was either her job that got in the way or his, occasionally it was University, and that was something she was proud he managed to get into. The only time she knew for a fact she would see him was at Christmas, the rest of the year she was luck if she saw Harry more than once every three months, though they did talk on the phone often enough, though James still couldn't really make a call on it, take one yes, make one?

Not even to save his own life.

"It's good to see you again mum." Harry said into his mothers hair, being taller than his mother meant that the Witcher ended up getting a face full of hair every time he bent down into a hug. That wasn't to say he was going to stop hugging her though, even if her hair irritated his nose like little else, he swore it was her shampoo. A normal human wouldn't have noticed a thing past a slight scent but to Harry's enhanced senses it was like someone had just shoved him head first into a bucket full of lavender essence.

"It's good to see you to Harry." Lilly Potter replied letting her eldest go just a little reluctantly. "Are you here on business or pleasure?" She inquired, Harry debated lying very briefly before deciding against it. Like it or not Lilly Potter, like her husband, was a Senior Auror, though she had told him once that before the war she had been a Healer. Apparently after the war with Voldemort The Department for Magical Law Enforcement was very low on people and needed every able bodied person they could lay their hands on. What Lilly Potter had planned to be a very short career change ended up becoming permanent when she found that she enjoyed working with her husband on cases.

Though Harry also suspected she liked helping solve crimes, his mother was very intelligent and she probably liked the challenge of figuring out a particularly difficult case.

Though granted his mother had also told him that Professor Flitwick, a man Harry had met more than a handful of times due to his regular attendance at the Potter Yuletide Ball, had also offered her a complete apprenticeship under him to get her Charms Mastery. According to his mother she was always debating on whether or not to take him up on that offer, so it was possible that her career would change once more to Charms Professor, a position she would have to take up for Hogwarts years one through four as Flitwick's apprentice.

Personally Harry thought that his mother would do quite well for herself as an educator, she certainly had the love of learning and children that was necessary in a truly spectacular teacher.

"Business," Harry replied with a slight grimace avoiding Lilly Potter's eyes as he did so. Neither his mother or father had ever seen him when he was working and neither had he they. But the Witcher was very sure that neither Lilly nor James Potter ever broke as many laws as he did on a regular basis when it came to getting results. Thankfully Madame Bones wouldn't look into anything he had touched to deeply when it came to getting certain things done, for example the Organ Trafficking Ring. They all wanted it shut down and Auror's could not act outside of the law in order to get results, he could, it was the whole reason that she had advertised for a Witcher in the first place.

The problem needed to be solved, quickly.

That couldn't be done by sticking to legal channels so Madame Bones reached out to people that had no reason to stay inside of legal channels when getting the job done. It was almost certain that she would know that he killed more than one person to give her the information, especially when he came to her within a day of the notice for help being posted. But if they were part of the trafficking ring then she wouldn't do much more than give the investigation a small glance over then quietly having it shut down and the case declared cold with not enough evidence to continue the line of investigation. It was certainly illegal but with The Ministry of Magic being as corrupt as it was when one wanted results quickly they needed to step outside of normal protocol.

"I see," Lilly answered her eyes searching her son's for something, Harry stared straight back at her and his mother must have found whatever she had been looking for as she nodded approvingly. "May I ask what business that is then?" She inquired eyes once more going over all the weaponry on his person.

"The Organ Trafficking Case." Harry replied bluntly getting a grimace of understanding from his mother.

"Yes I know that one fairly well, James and I have been working on it since it came to our attention along with Kingsley and Moody. We haven't come up with much, though one of the shops we were going to start staking out had a mysterious fire recently. Do you know of a seller or something of that nature?" Lilly asked, Harry made very sure to keep his breathing regulated. Keeping his head still and his body still moving from side to side swaying lightly. Trying to avoid any actions that may point out that he knew more than a little about what his mother was speaking of, mostly to avoid questions about the fire rather than questions about the investigation.

There were many ways to find if a person was lying. Small examples of ways that one could figure out a lie from the truth were the persons breathing speeding up, their head quickly moving in one direction, going completely still, providing more information than asked for, touching ones mouth before speaking, instinctively covering vulnerable body parts such as the neck, biting ones lips, pursed lips, difficulty speaking, staring without blinking, shuffling feet along with many other things. All these small actions of body language added together could help a person spot a lair very quickly and as a Senior Auror his mother would know most if not all of them.

Thankfully one of the things covered by The Academy was how to lie without getting caught, teaching behavioural mannerisms and motions associated with truthful behaviour. This was because while Witcher's quite often did Government work more often than not it involved lying to people and The Academy was of the opinion that if you had to do something you better be able to do it well. There were only a few people in the world that could lie as well or better than a fully trained Witcher, Spies, Corporate Executives, Politicians and Lawyers being the main examples.

"Well I know a bit more than that." Harry admitted as the number five came up on the elevator, just one more floor to go, dammit these things were slow! Seriously why couldn't they get a newer elevator, it would make everyone lives so much easier than this old thing.

"So you know of a distributor then or maybe a buyer?" Lilly inquired and Harry couldn't help the smile that came to his face at her first thought, he'd be giving his mother a little more than that.

"Try their surgery room and main processing plant." The Witcher countered a small smile on his face as he did so, Lilly Potter's mouth fell open making an O, her eyes wide. Oh that look of utter flabbergasted, astounded, disbelief really was hilarious, Harry struggled not to burst out laughing. His humour was quickly muted by another fact, his mother and father were working this case, they would most likely be sent in during the assault, oh this was going to be awkward and they were likely going to have a very long conversation when they next met. Because Harry got the sinking feeling that today both James Potter and Lilly Potter were going to see him kill first hand.

"You're joking." His mother stated breathlessly, getting her amazement under control. While Harry lamented the fact that he had not had a camera on hand to capture her look of amazement forever on film. Maybe Dumbledore would let him borrow that Pensive every now and then when he wanted a laugh?

Probably not, but a man could dream.

"Nope not at all, I'm just here to see Madame Bones to talk about my findings and then begin the assault." Harry admitted, as the doors to the elevator opened revealing the Auror Offices. It was nothing special a bunch of two meter by two meter cubicles with Wizards and Witches looking over various bits of paperwork, while the occasional memo circled their head kept aloft by an enchantment until they plucked it from the air and read it.

There were a few offices four on one side of the room and four on the other, each office carried a strange name on it. Like the first one which was Tipsy Flying, Which was exactly what it sounded like, a task force of Auror's specifically on call to deal with people who went flying drunk and erase the memory of any muggle who saw them in the act. The rooms were a place where groups of Auror's pooled their talents and resources for larger scale operations. The final office, ninth one in total, was at the back of the room and had the words Head of Department stamped quite clearly on the door, the name Bones directly beneath it.

"Assault?" His mother asked, voice low as to not alert the other Auror's around them as they walked towards Madame Bones' office. Harry greeted a few that he knew with a wave, the neon pink haired Tonks being the only one he knew particularly well outside of some of the Senior Auror's that were friends with his parents.

"Just wait until we're inside. I'd rather not explain this twice." Harry admitted before knocking on the dark red oak door to Amelia Bones office, his knuckles sharply rapping off of the wood in a quick beat.

"Come in," The words were spoken almost immediately. The Front Desk probably had some way of magically telling her that a visitor, a heavily armed visitor, was coming down. Opening the door Harry slipped inside, Lilly following suit, and laid eyes on Amelia Bones for the first time since The Potter Easter Celebration, another stuffy formal event he had shown up for since it was held by family. She was an older woman, clearly in her early fifties hair very much more steel-grey than the brown it used to be, a pair deep blue eyes stared at Harry, assessing him their gaze giving away very little.

"The Front Desk said that you would be coming to see me, what do you have for me Witcher?" Madame Bones asked, like every Pureblood, well almost every Pureblood, she was a stickler for proper etiquette and what that called for right now was for her to referred to him as she would a business associate. Rather than the little boy who she had occasionally, very occasionally, looked over as a child when no one else could take him. Besides she was already ignoring etiquette and protocol a fair bit by allowing his mother into the room without questioning her as to why she was there.

"The location of the Organ Trafficking Rings surgery room and main processing plant." Harry replied instantly, usually he liked to announce things like that with a little fanfare. Get people pumped up that he found what they were looking for, or had exorcised some pesky spirit that had been haunting them. This however wasn't one of those times when that would be a good idea, the longer he spent here the more people who were going to die.

"Explain." Amelia Bones didn't even blink an eyelid at his words, simply focusing on what she needed to know next.

"I raided a distribution point of theirs and after that a small warehouse for their goods. Got good intel from one of the people inside that the main hub is outside of Chichester in West Sussex. I've got a more exact location as well, apparently they run the place by abducting the homeless mostly but also anyone they think won't be missed. Then they transport them back to the main hub via Portkey or by driving them depedning on the conditions chop them up and drive them out to their distribution points." Harry answered green cat like eyes boring into the woman before him.

"Numbers?" Amelia asked, thankfully his mother was still quiet or else she would likely have been made to leave by now.

"Between fifteen to thirty in total at the main hub though my intel puts the overall operation at between fifty and seventy five people directly involved, no way of knowing how many distributors there are though." A grimce made its way to Harry's face as he revealed the next piece of information. "They're also armed, accoridng to my source they have a few small arms at the main hub, mostly handguns but they also, apparently, managed to get their hands on a couple of MP5 sub-machine guns." The Witcher added, Madame Bones may not have known exactly what an MP5 was precisely but she certainly understood the words sub-machine gun.

"I see, does it get worse?" The Head of Magical Law Enforcement asked sounding somewhat tired, not surprising really in their lines of work Murphy's Law was King.

If it could go wrong, it **would** go wrong.

"Yes actually," Harry admitted scraping a hand through his hair. "The place I hit is due for resupply from the main hub tomorrow so unless you want to tip them off that something is very, very wrong we need to hit them tonight. To make matters worse they have a Witch, Wizard or Goblin working with them as there were Wards over the place I hit. Possibly even more troubling is the fact that most of those involved are, apparently, either Each-Uisge or Cynocephalus so they can smell us coming from some distance away and that's not even mentioning their hearing." The Witcher stated grimly making Madame Bones close her eyes and massage her temples slowly, he knew the feeling, nothing could ever be easy.

"I see," Amelia stated before her eyes opened once more and focused on Lilly Potter. "Get your husband, Sirius Black, Alastor Moody, Frank and Alice Longbottom, Nymphadora Tonks, Rufus Scrimgeour and Remus Lupin in room five immdiately we have a lot to do and not much time so make it quick." The DMLE head snapped, his mother gave a short salute before heading out of the room quickly.

"We're going at this a little understaffed ain't we?" Harry asked looking up at the ceiling with a shake of his head. "Eleven of us against thirty in a worst case scenario, not exactly the best numbers unless your in the thirty." The Witcher remarked standing at the same time as his, very occasional, babysitter.

"Yes," Amelia admitted walking around the desk and towards the door. "But they are the only ones I can trust to not go running to Fudge or Malfoy about all of this. If it comes out in the wrong way that Each-Usige and Cynocephalus were in on creating this Organ Trafficking Ring then mark my words it will end badly, very badly. This does need to be resolved but it needs to be done so in such a way that neither Malfoy nor Fudge or Umbridge can use it to make even harsher restriction on Creatures that do not deserve it. Merlin knows it's hard enough to keep Remus employed here as it is, had to dodge a department inspection last week by having him listed as an outside advisor." Madame Bones stated opening the door back into the main office and heading for room five, Harry following on dutifully behind.

Amelia quickly opened the door to room five and entered, Harry following in at a sedate pace. The room was nothing special, though it was magically expanded, enough room for ten to fifteen people to sit around and brain storm, a massive conference table at it's centre and a chalkboard at the back of the room a different theories stuck to it with pictures of possible suspects along side. Harry recognised both his mother and fathers handwriting on the board and he was fairly certain that it was Sirius that had drawn the barely adequate picture of a cock on one of the suspects forehead.

Not wasting time Harry pulled the map he had been carrying from his pocket and laid it on the table, an area circled in red clearly denoting where the main hub was, notes written next to it, also in red, about what numbers to expect in addition to the Wards that Robert had known of and a rough idea of what the inside of the facility looked like along side the terrain.

"You managed to get quite a bit, do I want to know how?" Amelia asked her voice conversational, not condemning at all even knowing that more than one person likely died for Harry to gain so much information in such a small amount of time.

"Probably not Auntie." Harry admitted, defaulting to his old name for the woman and gaining a stern look for his trouble. It slipped off of him like water from a ducks back, he got worse looks than that from Wizards when he decided to nip into The Leaky Cauldron for drinks of a lunchtime.

Usually with a few insults of Freak, or some variation there of, hell last time he'd started a fist fight with a guy over the use of that word. It wasn't much of a fight, post-human killing machine against drunk wizard without a wand, it went about as well for the wizard as you might expect.

The door swung open making Harry, as well as Amelia Bones, swung his head towards it. Considering he had not heard anyone approaching the room, it likely had some variety of silencing charm on it to dampen sound and let those inside think without overhearing everything that happened outside. The Auror offices could get quite loud when they wanted to, that was something Harry remembered from some of the very few times he had gone with his father or mother into the office, usually just a small stop over before they went somewhere else.

Standing in the doorway was a grizzled old form, the heavy thump of a cane and wooden leg became apparent as Alastor 'Mad Eye' Moody walked into the room, his 'Mad Eye' swivelling quickly in its socket attempting to find any danger in the room. Moody showed his experience as an Auror in a way few others could boast, namely he had a lot of scars from his years on the job and as a veteran of the first war with Voldemort, as well as having a chunk of his own nose missing.

Alastor surveyed the room for a second giving Harry a short nod, one that the Witcher returned he'd known Moody ever since he was a child and had a lot of respect for the Auror. Respect that was reciprocated now that he was a Witcher, you could say what you wanted about Moody he might not like the way Witcher's tended to operate, namely ignoring any law that wasn't convenient to them, but he damn well respected their abilities.

"Potter." The elder man greeted with a gruff growl as was his custom. If Harry ever heard Moody greeting someone tenderly he would likely attack them man thinking it was an imposter. With his usual shuffling gate Moody made his way deeper into the room giving a single nod to Amelia as he did so, as a Senior Auror he was entitled to a bit of informality. As a Senior Auror who had the best arrest record in Department history, in addition to being the first choice to replace Barty Crouch Sr as head of the Department when Crouch was forced out, Moody had earned a lot more than just a **bit** of informality.

"Wotcher Harry!" Even if he hadn't been looking at the door Harry Potter would have known who was greeting him by the first word alone. No one else he knew used that particular word when greeting people, well actually that was something of a lie. Samantha 'Call me Sam' Nishimura had said it to him once, just once mind you, when they met. Still the chances of ever running into a Muggle in The Department of Magical Law Enforcement were laughable so it couldn't have been her. As such it had to be Nymphadora 'Call me Tonks' Tonks, in her last year under old Alastor as a Rookie before she would become a full fledged Auror at the end of the year and, if the grapevine was to be believed, Mad Eye would retire.

Of course the rumour that Mad Eye would retire had been circulating for years so Harry really didn't believe it. From where the black haired Witcher was standing Moody was more likely to continue being an Auror until either he died in the line of duty or was forced by the department to retire.

He put fifty fifty odds on either one of those being the case.

As a Metamorphmagus Tonks regularly changed her appearance, today it was bright pink hair that cut off at around the back of her neck, a small button nose and violet eyes. If it wasn't for the fact that his senses could constantly pick out the smell of her shampoo then Harry really would have never been able to tell if she tried to sneak up on him in a crowded room.

"Evening Tonks." Harry replied before going back to looking at the map, an action he was joined in by everyone else in the room. The door opened with a crash, the doorknob slamming into the stone wall as a man bounded into the room. His face was full with a wide smile on his face showing off white teeth, black hair was allowed to fall freely around him reaching the back of his neck and giving off a sort of wild look and feeling.

"Harry!" Sirius Black roared and bounded forward snapping his Godson up into a hug one that was easily tight enough to cause visible discomfort in an ordinary person. Sirius' smile did not diminish in the slightest even as Ameila Bones attempted to glare a hole in his head at the unprofessional action. In contrast Tonks looked as amused by the whole situation as Moody looked exasperated by it, likely wanting to get to work rather than wait out a happy family reunion.

"How have you been Sirius?" Harry asked warmly his own arms crushing his godfather in a hug and making Sirius squeak. Harry's small smile morphed into a smirk, Sirius had clearly forgotten just how strong he really was if he thought hugging him tightly was going to make him uncomfortable, now the tables had turned!

"Let the Mutt go Harry, no point in suffocating him after all." The words of Frank Longbottom clearly announced his entrance to the room, his wife Alice following closely behind. It had been nothing short of a miracle when Auror's had managed to track Bellatrix Lestrange and her cohorts to the Longbottom's hiding place before the real torture began or else Fank and Alice may well have no longer been amongst the sane and quite possibly among the living. All things considered Harry liked Frank and Alice Longbottom, he'd met both of them more than once as, at least politically speaking, their families were very close. Well that and the Longbottom family had attend many of the same events as his own had, hell his brother Michael was good friends with their son Neville. But by the time that had happened he was gone from the Manor unless it was Christmas so Harry rarely interacted with the two.

"Probably a good idea." The Witcher admitted letting Sirius go as the dark haired Wizard rubbed his ribs tenderly. "Good to see you both Frank, Alice." Harry acknowledged each with a nod of his head and received one in return.

"You to Harry," Alice Longbottom stated with a warm smile, lovely woman that one. Though according to his father had a temper that put even Lilly Potter's to shame when stoked to full fury, it was always the quiet ones. Remus Lupin shuffled through the door next looking slightly less haggard than the last time Harry had seen the man, he also seemed to be in the possession of a new, and quite nice, suit. Well at least unlike Auror's Moony didn't have to wear robes, Harry found them to be inconvenient at the best of times. The brown haired man smiled warmly at him and greeted the Witcher with a hearty handshake.

"Harry." The werewolf greeted his voice warm. That wasn't surprising in the slightest, Moony and he had always gotten on well. That had only become more apparent after he had graduated from The Academy and truly began to understand the discrimination that went on towards creatures. Honestly speaking Harry had a lot of respect for Remus Lupin, a man who, despite The Ministry of Magic making it extremely difficult, had managed to make something of his life and make something good of it at that.

"Moony," Harry replied a smile of his own in place. Well at least it was nice to be working with people that he liked, for the most part anyway. From the few times that he had been forced to work with Rufus Scrimgeour, Harry could honestly say he did not like the man. Oh Scrimgeour was certainly good at his job and more than qualified to help but his personality could really use some work. Sure Moody had personality quirks as well but he also had redeeming features, like a love of Black Comedy and Gallows Humour that Harry couldn't help but like. Scrimgeour on the other hand, well Harry had yet to discover anything in that man that he could actually like on a personal level.

Respect on a professional level?

Yes.

Like on a personal level?

No.

As they say Speak of The Devil and he shall appear. At that exact moment Rufus Scrimgeour chose to walk through the door with his kind of loping grace, a grim weathered face housed a pair of yellowish eyes that were somewhat common amongst Wizards. His brown hair resembled something of a lions mane, which had always made Harry wonder if he was a Gryiffindor when he was in school and was keeping that spirit alive. Not speaking Rufus looked around the room for a moment before nodding at each person in turn and taking a seat, not one for unnecessary talking that one.

Finally coming through the door was a pair of very familiar faces to Harry, his mother followed by the messy haired James Potter, his father. Though he did seem to have aged a bit since the last time Harry had seen him. Black hair starting to fleck with grey, but his fathers Hazel eyes remained as full of warmth as they ever had been. Harry did have to wonder though, were most of those grey hairs from his work or from his children, personally he felt it could go either way really. Much like before though he attributed most of them to his own career choice.

"Harry," His father stated with a warm smile making the Witcher cross the floor and bundle his father into a hug almost immediately. It had been a long time since they had last seen each other after all, much for the same reasons that he hadn't been able to see his mother.

"Good to see you again Dad." Harry stated pulling away from the older Potter smile still in place, this was turning into a somewhat lovely family reunion.

"Could we get on with it please, we are wasting time." And like that it was ruined, thank you very much Rufus, he so needed that interruption. A large part of Harry felt like telling the older man where he could stick it but it was immediately beaten down by the part that pointed out he was, technically, still on the clock.

"Good point." Harry replied stepping away from his father and back to the table and map standing just behind Madame Bones. "Would you like to start or should I?" He questioned the older woman while looking at the red circle he had placed on.

"As you all know I sent out a missive asking for assistance in the locating and possibly destroying an Organ Smuggling Ring that may or may not have been operating inside of Britain's borders. When we first heard about it there was a chance that the truck was an isolated incident, Mr. Potter here has since brought forth evidence that this is not the case as well as the location and approximate numbers of the main hub of operations for said Organ Trafficking Ring." Amelia finished before looking at The Witcher behind her, "Take the floor now please Mr. Potter and explain the important points." Harry nodded and stepped forward pointing down at the red circle on the map with his index finger.

"This is an area around twenty kilometres out from Chichester in West Sussex, it is also the hub of the organ trafficking ring you and I have been tracking down. Thanks to some intel that I've gathered I can tell you right now that the piece of land in unplotable, that circle represents the entire area it could be covering so we're going to have to do a grid search to nail it down exactly. The amount of area that we need to cover in that search is around ten square kilometres in total. However I was also able to get a good lay out of the place, it consists of a two story home surrounded by six caravans and a large greenhouse running off the back of the house. The house itself is used for storage of various equipment, the caravans for harvested human organs and the greenhouse is used to store raw product, or live humans if you prefer not to beat around the bush about it." Harry stated bluntly eyes focusing on each person in turn, unsurprisingly it was Mad Eye that used the small lull he left for them to take in the information to ask a question.

"How many and what are they carrying?" The gruff old man asked, Harry answered immediately.

"We're looking between fifteen and thirty in the main hub, though my sources give me a rough estimate of between fifty and seventy five total. As for what they're carrying from what I know it's handguns and a couple of MP5's, or sub-machine guns if you want the less specific term." Harry stated quickly drawing curses from around the table.

"It get worse I'm afraid." Harry stated bluntly getting a chuckle from Mad Eye and, strangely enough, Rufus Scrimgeour.

"Something you learn at my age brat," Mad Eye stated a wide smile on his lips, though it was devoid of any joy. "It always gets worse." The Senior Auror finished before taking a swig from hip flask, from what Harry could smell inside was particularly nice whiskey, single malt to unless Harry missed his guess.

"Well then I suppose you wont be surprised when I tell you that there is either a Wizard,Witch or a Goblin involved then." Harry stated bluntly a few disgusted sighs were all that met his proclamation, unsurprising these were the people who often dealt with the scum of Wizarding society they were probably used to expecting the worst in people. Which really made it all the more surprising that most, he couldn't speak for Scrimgeour, of them still believed that people and creature were, inherently, good at heart..

"I raided a small distribution outpost and it had quite the nice ward scheme up, we can assume that the main hub will have one as well. Worse the distribution outpost I raided was expecting resupply tomorrow so we have to go in tonight unless we want a welcome wagon waiting for us. Possibly even worse every member involved in this organ ring is most likely either a Each-Usige or Cynocephalus." Harry stated with a sigh.

The Senior Aurors, and one almost graduated Trainee, looked at each other with serious expressions on their faces. This was not exactly the best of situations that they had ever been in, not the worst either but certainly not the best.

"Well we have to hit them tonight or else if they have any sense at all they'll pack up and disappear when they realise they lost a distribution point." Mad Eye stated simply, he didn't bother implying that any of the people who had manned said distribution point would go and tell their bosses that the Auror's were likely coming. Everyone in the room was under no illusions that they were still alive, that just wasn't the way that Witchers conducted business most of the time. Especially when it came to people who were killing off innocents for their own gain. Though they would still need to check on said distribution point after the whole event was over as part of their report, Harry had made sure to leave no trace of him being at that location so they could check all they wanted nothing would be pointing to him either way. It had been the site of a mysterious fire and no bones would be found in the area.

"We need to locate exactly where they are, thankfully I should be able to do that if we get close enough." Sirius added tapping his nose, it was no secret the man was an animagus anymore. No secret anyone who was a close friend of Remus Lupin was, hell they were all on the register these days. Forced to disclose that fact when telling The Ministry to make sure that Peter Pettigrew's cell in Azkaban was Animagus proof. Last he heard Ratman was insane to, ah well traitors are rewarded as traitors deserve.

"We'll spend the next hour or so here brain storming while I have some Portkeys made up and get the right paperwork in order, after that we move out be ready." Madame Bones stated making Harry nod as he started to contribute his own ideas to the overall plan.

 **XXX**

Harry could see the breath misting before his face, it was damned cold and that fact was not going to change even if he was ignoring the weather. The AKS-74U in his hands was a comforting weight, it was a weapon he was used to which made it a very welcome companion in any fight. It was also one of the things in his briefcase, though granted it had been disassembled. Green eyes easily cut through the gloom like a hot knife through butter, the Cat Potion was easily one of the best weapons in any good Witchers arsenal. Night vision goggles were quite usually used as well, due to the fact that unlike the potion they wouldn't run out at an inopportune time. That said the Cat Potion had it's own upsides, like not adding another few pounds to his head and being vastly more portable.

It also granted close to perfect night vision and when combined with a Swallow for that extra regeneration boost and a Rook potion to increase physical ability they were one hell of a deadly combination. He'd only ingested the three potions ten minutes ago and they'd still be going strong an hour from now but come the two hour mark they'd be on the wane. Two and a half hours from now they'd be completely out of his system, thankfully they already had their targets. The exact location of the house had been unplotable but not invisible, and thankfully not protected by a Fidelius Charm, Moody had the bright idea of doing a flyover on brooms to get an exactly location and, pun completely intended, it had worked like a charm. Though granted it had taken a little more time than usual due to the fact they had needed to check for wards while in the air and fly high enough to avoid any wards that may be specifically meant to check for aerial visitors.

Now all they actually had to do was get a few of them alive, enough to prove the rings existence and get the rest of their co-conspires. Madame Bones had allowed lethal force on the ground, when dealing with people who would be trying to kill you with, in a couple of cases, fully automatic weapons, that was a good idea. Not that lethal force was their first option either, every person currently approaching the house was under strict orders to only kill as a last resort. They had been successful in setting up an Anti-Porteky and Anti-Apparation Ward, the only things getting in or out were now those that held one of the DMLE portkeys they had brought with them. Thirty a piece, those were for people they captured, sending them into holding cells, and one for themselves should something go horribly, horribly, wrong.

They were working in teams of two, Sirius was on Harry's left side silently weaving through the trees with an ease born of years of practise. It had been surprising to the Witcher that the Auror Corps had apparently invested in body armour, kevlar vests to be exact. According to Amelia they hadn't actually been paid for by The Department of Magical Law Enforcement but rather by an investment by herself. According to figures she had lost ten Aurors to things like gunfire in the last year, Fudge refused to allow the purchase of kevlar vests with Ministry funds. Citing that there should be a magical equivalent that could be used instead, thereby removing the need to rely on a 'suspect' muggle creation.

As a matter of fact there was a magical equivalent to kevlar was called dragon hide but it needed to be significantly thicker than the amount used for something like a jacket. Which naturally made it a bad choice for making a bulletproof vest from since it would be cheaper and just as practical to use kevlar.

When Ameila had gone to Fudge about allocating a budget for twenty dragon hide vests in place of kevlar he had promptly declined the extra Galleons she wanted. Citing that dragon hide at that thickness was to expensive and another substitute needed to be found, it was at that point that the older woman admitted she just gave up and brought twenty kevlar vests herself, there were bonuses in being the Head of an Ancient and Noble family, monetary bonuses. Apparently she had ordered them through The Acadmey which means that Vesimir had likely made them a tidy, though not excessive, handlers fee.

His X-2 dart gun firmly clutched in his hands Harry made his way through the gloom staying low to the ground and being very careful to avoid anything that could tip off his prey that he was getting closer. A man stood less than ten meters away from him, Harry was unsure if he was a Each-Uisge or a Cynocephalus but in truth it didn't really matter both had senses in some ways superior to that of humans. Both Each-Uisage and Cynocephalus had senses of smell that were better than any ordinary humans and the Cynocephalus had hearing on par with a dogs making it almost impossible to sneak up on them unless you were very well trained.

Taking a second to observe his prey Harry quickly noted the man's golden hair and pale skin, considering that Each-Uisage usually took on a more 'beautiful' look than their Cynocephalus counterparts the young Witcher was willing to put his money on this particular target being a Water Demon rather than one of the dog like Cynocephalus. Either way it didn't really matter, taking a small breath Harry steadied his aim and pulled the trigger, immediately pulling on the side of his weapon to load it once more before sending another dart down the line and into the side of his targets neck, the possible Each-Uisage dropped to the ground with a small thud, hopefully any Cynocephalus around would attribute it to just another normal forest sound and leave it be.

Walking forward as a pair Godfather and Godson knelt down next to the unconscious creature as Harry plucked the two darts out of his targets neck. Before patting him down and retrieving the weapons on him, a single handgun, a Glock 17 unless Harry's eyes were deceiving him and a long knife tucked into his boot handing them over to Sirius the dark haired Witcher placed the small metal disk he had been given on the possible Each-Uisage's chest.

"Ventus," Harry muttered lowly activating the portkey and seeing the unconscious creature before him disappear in an instant, looking back his green eyes caught his Godfather placing a similar metal disk on the gun and knife respectively.

"Testimonium-A3," Sirius stated as both weapons disappeared back to the DMLE's Evidence Lock Up. The word Testimonium sounded vaguely Latin, it could be the word that Testimony was based off of. That was if it was an actual word and not just something that some Wizard had thought up in an attempt to make it sound more magical. Harry really would not put it past a Pureblood to try just that.

"Monocle," Harry's words were short and to the point and Sirius knew exactly what his Godson wanted reaching up to his forehead and retrieving small glass device before placing it over his eye and allowing his vision to enter a magical spectrum, more importantly it let them know how close they were to the wards a quick look gave the dark haired Wizard everything he needed to know.

"Where not there yet, over the next hill just before we enter the circle of caravans that's where the wards start." Sirius replied moving past his Godson and further towards the base of the hill while Harry covered him with his carbine, if anything tried to get up close and personal with Sirius Black whatever it was would soon find itself with several bullet wounds courtesy of his Godson.

They had been playing this game of leapfrog for the last four hours one of them moving up while covered by the other before the roles were reversed, it meant taking a lot longer to reach their destination but it also meant there was less of chance of being taken by surprise and killed if they had somehow missed a sentry. Usually it wouldn't have taken anywhere near this long but they wanted to take their time and make sure they didn't miss even a single person. Reaching up to his ear as he moved forward being covered by his Godfather Harry flicked the radio in his ear so he could use the inbuilt microphone and relay their position and status to the rest of the group.

"Heading up the final hill before the wards now, another sentry sent into detention and weapons in lock up. He didn't have an MP5, they're still in play, over." The Witcher stated brining up his AKS-74U as he walked forward eyes carefully searching for any danger and finding none, much to Harry's relief. After all while his gun would most likely kill whatever tried to attack him the amount of noise the AKS-74U would make, even with it's suppressor fitted, would probably also let all Cynocephalus in the area know exactly where he was, they did have the hearing of a canine after all. Harry did not want to do that until all of the teams were in position and ready to engage with the main force, preferably he didn't want it to happen at all.

"Understood, so far their have been no problems. Teams 1,3 and 4 are in position. We are just waiting on you and team 5 and then we can begin." Amelia Bones voice came back down the line, she was leading Team One with Scrimgeour and Moony while Teams Three and Four consisted of Frank and Alice Longbottom and his parents Lilly and James Potter. Which meant it was just him and Sirius, Team Two along with Mad Eye and Tonks, Team Five, that needed to get in position. Well since they did have the longest trails to get by that was to be expected, when everyone was where they needed to be the attack could begin.

"So far we have eleven of the suspected thirty at this base in custody, if we're lucky we may even have the numbers advantage now but no one relax just yet. Out." Amelia's voice sounded again before the radio went silent. Hopefully she was right, thirty was apparently the upper limit of what way at the main point though it was usually less that said they had to go in assuming the worse case scenario after all until the job was done something could always go wrong.

That said it was nice to see that Ameila was more progressive than nearly all other Pureblood's that Harry could name, most wouldn't even think of using radio's to stay in contact with a squad, instead relying on using a Patronus. Which, while a good way of passing on information, was also glowed and was silver, both of which would do nothing to conceal it in a dark forest and it also needed to be close to a person to deliver said message. Useful for day to day life but impractical for a night op that required both stealth and to be in contact with your unit, having everyone outfitted with a radio was a quick and simple way of solving the problem, of course at a place like Hogwarts which had a ward specifically designed to disrupt technology it wouldn't be much use but right now it ticked all the boxes for what was needed. 

Maybe that was something an enterprising Wizard should look into. After all he was sure that if some Wizard managed to create a mobile that worked at Hogwarts, where technology like that is specifically Warded against, and the muggle world they could make a tidy profit. Who knew maybe it would even help the Magical World move more towards the modern age, he would need to have a chat to Moony about that idea later. If it could be done not only could they revolutionise the communication network of the Magical World they could make a killing on the side.

An idea to hang onto.

"Team 5 in position." Moody's harsh voice crackled over the radio as Harry arrived next to his Godfather. Placing a hand to his ear to switch on his mic the dark haired Witcher informed the others that both he and Sirius were where they needed to be.

"This is Team 2, in position at the edge of the wards. Over." Harry spoke quietly settling in next to his Godfather and waiting for further instructions. The Wards around the property meant that they had to be careful about taking them down, because if they did it haphazardly then every single person within would know they were coming in short order. Of course that was also assuming that the people inside didn't already know they were coming. None of the sentry's that Sirius and he had taken out had a radio to keep in contact with those inside but that didn't mean that one of the others did not and if that were the case and they missed a check in then it was quite possible they would have a welcoming party waiting for them.

The Wards around the property were actually rather standard Privacy Wards. Muggle Repelling, Notice Me Not, Alarm and Intruder Wards. All these also had a Charms based equivalent but that was a spell that only lasted so long while the Wards were permanent. The Muggle Repelling and Notice Me Not Wards were easy enough to get past, no one was a muggle which took care of the first one and the second was taken care of by the fact that they all knew to ignore the feeling in the back of their heads that they were forgetting something that was characteristic of a Notice Me Not Ward. In fact the Ward actually did work like that it prevented people from noticing what it was hiding by trying to convince them they had something important to do somewhere else.

It was the last two that were the problematic ones, the Alarm Ward was self explanatory, it anyone not keyed to it entered it's range it would alert those inside to that fact. It was the Intruder Wards that compounded this problem as they would display on a map of the property exactly where those not keyed into them were. Losing the element of surprise would put them at a severe disadvantage but a survivable and maybe even winnable one. But lacking the element of surprise and having the enemy know all of their positions?

It would be a blood bath.

Thankfully, The Department of Magical Law Enforcement had ways of handling things like that. While an experienced Ward Breaker, a variation of the Curse Breaker profession that dealt in Wards rather than Curses as the name implied, in every team they could circumvent this problem, at least in part. More powerful and exotic Wards still would require a Ward Breaker but for basic one's like those before them a substitute had been created by imbuing small metal spikes with the spells necessary to nullify basic Wards.

Technically the metal spikes actual name were Ward Disruption Stakes but any one who didn't feel like using that long name simply called them Spikes.

Spikes, when placed at the edge of a Ward in a Pentagram pattern, would create a magic circuit. This circuit would interfere with the currently active Wards disrupting them and rendering them useless. Of course this particular method was not without it's down sides, to start with Spikes could only hold this circuit open for so long, just slightly better than half an hour to be exact, before the magical power they had inside them would run dry and the Wards would come back to full strength. So for the sake of using exact numbers from the second the Spikes went down they had thirty minuets to complete their mission, or else things were probably going to go very bad very quickly.

"Alright place your Spikes." Ameila Bones voice came through his ear piece again, Sirius plucked the Spike out of his top chest pocket. It was not a large object, merely being six inches long and tapering to a point and around an inch in diameter. The most obvious fact it was magical came from the lightly glowing runes running up and down it's length.

Sirius pushed the Spike into the ground, that was one fifth of the circuit ready. Sirius placed his wand to the end of the Spike, with a quick push of magic it would activate and create part of the circuit. Here was the problem, it had to be done in close to exact concert with the other four Spikes. If Sirius was even a full second off of the others the entire circuit would not only fail it would fail catastrophically. In fact it would be such a catastrophic failure that the Spike, still very close to Sirius' face by the way, would explode it would also alert every one inside as the Wards flared up and one may or may not break but all would go haywire for a few seconds.

A few seconds would be more than enough for those inside to realise someone was likely on the way. It would likely take a minute or two for them to work out that Apparition and Portkeys were not a way out. Which would leave them with only brooms or land based transport to get away, with only eleven of them and possibly nineteen of the enemy left they would not get all of them. If whoever was inside had half a brain they would also likely set the caravans and house on fire before they tried to flee in order to destroy all the evidence that they could before getting out of dodge as fast as possible.

They could not afford to get this wrong.

"On my mark activate the Spikes, sound off in order of team if you understand, over." Amelia Bones' voice cut through the radio once more, asking for confirmation.

"This is Team 2, understood." Harry spoke into his own microphone and nodding at Sirius.

"Team 3, understood." Frank Longbottom's voice came over the radio.

"Team 4, understood." His fathers voice echoed over the line, he was probably in some kind of cave or rock formation considering the echo. James Potter may be a joker but he knew when to take things seriously and the possibility of over nineteen killers knowing they were coming if someone screwed up was definitely something he took seriously. Apparently his father had used to take life and death situations rather flippantly, humour was his coping mechanism apparently, but after all of his children were almost killed he didn't find humour anywhere near as appropriate anymore.

The same could be said of both Sirius and Remus for that matter.

"Team Five, understood." Moody's gruff voice cut into the line before it went silent once more.

"Good," Amelia's voice came over the radio. "From this point onwards lethal force is not only authorised, as it was before, but actively encouraged. When we were taking out those sentries we had the element of surprise but of all the weapons we have confiscated so far none have been a sub-machine gun so they are both still in play. There could even be more of them, the information on weapons was variable after all. That said they are definitely all armed if the ones currently in custody are any indication." She paused taking a deep breath, Harry didn't blame her if she was about to say what he thought she was it was going to be hard, it should never be easy to order people to kill.

"If you believe you can not take them safely, without harm to yourself, I encourage you to terminate the target with extreme prejudice. The same can be said for if you can not take down a target non-lethally without compromising the mission. We still want to take as many alive as possible but not at risk to our own, if you see any with a sub-machine gun kill on sight, We are not taking chances with those." Amelia stated, her voice sounding weary for the first time since the mission had started.

Harry checked his dart gun, he had three tranquilisers left for the X-2 after that he would need to get creative if he wanted to take people alive, Sirius had the bright idea of banishing rocks at the back of their targets heads at high speed to knock them unconscious when he ran out of ammo. A good idea, but even Sirius admitted that his aim with something like that would not be full proof and stunning spells would make to much light in this dark environment.

"All teams prepare to active the Spikes on my Mark." Ameila's voice cut back through the radio. "Three,Two, One, Mark." At the sound of the last word Sirius pushed his magic into the Spike, Harry could tell as it glowed brighter for a split second before dying down. Considering it did not explode that was a good sign that everyone completed the circuit with excellent timing.

"We have thirty minutes, move in and double check your targets before attacking. You do not want to hit one of our own, or any prisoners that they may have. Stop when you reach the edge of the site, Mad Eye will be giving the area a once over with his eye to give us an idea on where the enemies are. Move out." With those final words the radio once more went silent, Harry pushed up his sleeve revealing a small watch and hit the single button on the side. Instantly the digital display activated showing a set of numbers, when his watch went off that was thirty minutes up and when that happened all hell would break loose unless they were done.

"Lets go," His Godfathers words broke through Harry's thoughts and brought him back to the present. From the top of their hill they could see the lights of the property, it looked to around five minutes away, well time to go to work.

Nodding Harry descended the hill first, AKS-74U held out before him, like Ivory he had fitted the weapon with a suppressor. Their main aim was to be quiet about the entire affair, Harry didn't want to risk blowing their cover just because something managed to sneak up on him and got it's head blown off by an unsuppressed weapon. Though all that said he would prefer to take them out hand to hand if it needed to be done quick and quiet.

Suppressors, while they did make gun shots far quieter, did not make it as quiet as they did in the movies. It was less of a sharp whipping sound and more of a muted crack and gun shots were something that was definitely not natural. A Cynocephalus would probably pick up on it pretty quickly, even if the sound was suppressed. They may not know exactly what the sound was but it may just be enough to get them to search the grounds, not something Harry wanted to happen. Preferably they would finish this with no one knowing they were there until the job was over and done with.

Which actually had a fair to good chance of happening.

They had good information, his sources were not able to lie to him after all. A lay of the land and layout of the property in general so while they may not know the area as well as their targets they were far from blind. They also had the element of surprise, not to mention the advantages of superior training and equipment. Of course their targets still had one very big advantage, first hand knowledge of the terrain and that was something that could not be underestimated in terms of the tactical advantage it offered.

This could have gone very differently if there opponents were professionals. If the Sentries had radios and normal check in times that would have made the whole operation far more difficult. As they would have been working to the enemies time frame more so than they already were. Thankfully though this operation was not professionally trained, though they were rather well outfitted, if they were professionals this would have been an entirely different ballgame.

They were street thugs that were not ready to face a well coordinated and disciplined squad of people who had what was the equivalent of military training. But that didn't mean that they were not dangerous, they may be amateurs but the fact they had guns was nothing to laugh about. They could still get killed if they got over confident, or unlucky. Hopefully he could keep this to taking out their enemies silently, because if anyone on that property got trigger happy and stated to put bullets where they heard random sounds. Like the sound of a suppressed AKS-74U or Colt 1911. Then this could not only be his first job while his parents were around but also his last job ever.

Lady Luck liked him, in her own crazy bi-polar way. But bullets were never a good thing for ones health, bulletproof vest be damned. Harry didn't put it past one of those amateurs to get lucky and put one in his head, Witcher's could heal from at lot but a bullet to the head killed just about anything you cared to name, well unless that something was very, very lucky. Keeping things quick and quiet would be their best bet for finishing this without getting shot.

The X-2 would be his first choice for a silent takedown.

His fists would be the second.

While Harry had never particularly excelled at hand to hand combat. He was by no means bad at it. While ranged combat had been his area of expertise at The Academy, and it had stayed that way now he was working. So far relying on ranged combat over close quarters had worked out just fine for him.

Certainly he did not do badly at the other areas, next to ranged combat stealth and recon had been his best class. But he was certainly lacking in skill compared against his chosen area of expertise. That said clubbing someone in the back of the head with his elbow to knock them out would make a hell of a lot less noise, comparatively speaking, to shooting them with a rifle, okay technically the 74U was a carbine but most people didn't really know the difference, even if the weapon in question was suppressed.

He had a knife as a last resort when they got in close and it was to tight to draw his sword. But both species that guarded this place had superior senses of smell, if they smelled fresh blood in a place it wasn't meant to be they would get suspicious immediately. They would probably even send out some search teams, not something they wanted to happen if it could possibly be avoided.

Slipping closer to the boundary Harry came to rest behind a rather large tree, from what he could see there were at least two close by Sirius and he but without Mad Eye making sure that was the case he couldn't be certain if that was all. Kneeling down the dark haired Witcher pulled a monocular from the pouch on his back, it would give him a little better of an idea on exactly where everyone was. As Sirius came to rest next to him, crouched down to avoid giving away their position, Harry placed the monocular to his right eye and surveyed the area before him.

It was exactly like they had been led to believe, he was facing the side with the six caravans while the house was directly in front of him and the 'greenhouse' was just visible behind it. From what he could see their were two men guarding the caravans nearest to him, worse they were within spitting distance of each other so it was going to be tricky taking them out, a small amount of static let him know that someone had just switched their microphone back on.

"This is Moody," The words were spoken in the Senior Auror's characteristic growl. "I'm counting sixteen hostiles inside the perimeter. Teams of three at each point of the compass, that's by Teams 2, 3,4 and me. With four in the building itself, no one is in the greenhouse that is up and moving around, but there are four human bodies on operating tables, not sure if they're dead or alive though." Moody admitted sounding a little drained as he did so. Not surprising, in order to see so much he would need to be using some kind of spell to enhance his vision significantly, he hadn't seen Mad Eye with a pair of binoculars or monoculars after all.

It was probably putting a significant amount of stress on his mind to process all the visual imput that his eye was now giving him. Mad Eye probably wouldn't be able to do this twice in a short period so they simply had to hope that he got everything in one go.

"The remaining four appear to be playing cards in the dining room, ground floor, of that house. They're the ones that have those MP5's Potter was telling us about, their in the room, laying scattered around, punks don't even treat their weapons right." Mad Eye groused beofre seemingly focusing again. "Listen up I'll give you all a rough idea on exactly where the three guards near you are stationed. Team 3, the caravan that the one in grey is standing outside, the other two are inside, lure him away first if you can. Team Four all thee of yours are inside the caravan to your left," The microphone went quiet for a second. "Yeah that's the one now stop pointing at it like an idiot." Moody growled before speaking again. "Potter I can see you with that monocular, the only one you haven't seen yet is inside the caravan in front of you, also the one your not looking at is walking away from you, looks like he's going for a smoke break, I'd go after him first. That all I can tell you, Moody out." The grizzled Auror finished his words and the radios went silent once more, Harry placed the monocular back to his eye and picked out their unlucky first target, he was wondering a little close to the woods over to the left a couple of well place tranquiliser darts would put him out like a light.

"Okay listen up," Amelia Bones voice cracked like a whip over the radio. "Once each Team has taken out their sentries sound off, we want to hit the house together. If you understand please acknowledge, over."

"This is Team Two, acknowledged over." Harry spoke into the mic before turning his attention back to the men they would need to take out.

"Team Three, acknowledged over." Alice Longbottom's voice stated calmly.

"Team Four, acknowledged over." His mother's was calm and not echoing, they must have moved out of the cave or whatever they had been in before.

"Team Five, acknowledged over." Moody's gruff voice growled out.

"Very well, proceed as planed, out." Amelia's last message was very quick and to the point, which was fine Harry prefered to work like that. Signally to Sirius they slunk back into the shadows, small steps to avoid being heard. Thankfully their man had moved far enough away from the caravans windows that he wasn't in a particularly well lit area anymore, well he wasn't going to complain. As far as Harry was concerned he should almost be thanking the guy for the help. The X-2 was lifted from it's holster and aimed, 2 darts to the neck would put him out like a light, one would make him stumble a little first which may attract the other two away from the light, good.

With the sound of air being expelled the dart shot from the muzzle of the X-2 and buried itself in the side of the man's neck, considering he looked courser than a Each-Usige usually did so he was probably a Cynocephalus. The man stumbled after being hit by the dart, unlike an ordinary human like a Witch or Wizard he wouldn't be dropped instantly. His hand shook as it came up to the dart and his knees buckled. A rough hand plucked it free from his neck as his knees gave out and sent him to the floor with a muffled thud, his breathing picked up, he was trying to scream as the potion took effect. Half a second later his breathing evened out as his mind was put under and fell unconscious.

Harry placed the monocular to his eye and looked at the caravan, no one was moving, or at least the man he could see inside the caravan was not moving, still focused on a magazine he could not see the other. Slinking out of the shadows he placed his hands under the man's armpits and pulled him back into the tree line settling him next to Sirius while Harry disarmed him, another Glock and a knife, well at least they were consistent.

Sirius wasted no time in sending both his weapons and body to lock up, now it was time to focus on the next two. Placing the monocular back to his eye, Harry could see that the man was still at the table, no telling where the other one was but they would deal with the guy inside the caravan first. The other man was outside, in the open that was both an advantage and a disadvantage. Disadvantage because when they took him out someone else could see them do it and start shooting at them advantage because there were multiple ways for them to approach the fight.

With the man inside the caravan there was just one, they would have to come in through the door. If he saw them and recognised them as a threat before they got close enough it would be a simple matter to grab the Glock of of the table next to him and attempt to fill the two of them with lead. So either they had to lure him outside or finish him before he knew what was happening, Harry preferred the second option. If they lured him outside they would have to make some kind of noise to get his attention and hoped he walked outside to investigate rather than yelling for help, not a chance he was willing to take.

Harry signalled Sirius to move around the caravan, his Godfather would take out the other man if the opportunity presented itself, if it did not then at least he could use the microphone to give him fair warning if the man was about to sneak up on him. Laying close to the ground Harry covered the ground in a slow crawl aiming away from the door and towards the covered window, the reduced profile would make him harder to miss from the caravan if the man looked out the window and if the other man came within seeing distance then hopefully staying still would let him blend in enough to be passed by.

Staying low to the ground Harry readied the X-2 as he came up next to the caravan, the dampness of the ground having already soaked through his pants. The door was on his left, keeping to a crouch the dark haired man stepped into the door way just as a wet thud could be heard from the other side of the caravan, that must have been Sirius, either he must have taken out the other man as any sentry would have started shouting the second they found an intruder. The man's eyes came away from the magazine just as the first dart entered his throat a mere millisecond before the second, his head fell forward onto the desk before him with a bang as his conciousness fled.

Harry holstered the X-2 and returned his grip to the 74U laying prone on the ground with his weapon trained on the door. On the off chance that Sirius had not taken the other man out and the guard was planning an ambush then Harry would shoot him the second he was visible. A single hand appeared from the left of the door way, the side of the caravan away from the house, Sirius' hand.

"It's clear," Harry stated keeping his gun trained on the doorway just in case it was some kind of trick.

"Coming in." Sirius' voice called lightly as his hand disappeared from the doorway and Harry heard a small grunt and his Godfather lift something heavy from the ground next to him. That would be the body, he stood taking his hands off of the gun and going about his task of disarming and sending the crook to lock up. Sirius entered with a small huff as pulled the unconscious man up the stairs before laying him on the ground and setting about doing the same.

"How did you take him out anyway?" Harry inquired as he sent his own target to the DMLE lock up making his Godfather look up and smile at him smugly.

"Do your highly trained Witcher senses not simply know?" He inquired with a smirk making Harry groan internally, he loved Siruis to pieces but sometimes he was insufferable.

"No they don't now tell me you git." The dark haired Witcher groused with good natured humour.

"Well it took a feat of cunning and bravery beyond the keen of mortal men not even a God could hope to compare to it's splend-" Was as far as Sirius got before Harry cut him off.

"Just get to the point old man." He stated with a smirk of his own in place. "In case you haven't noticed we're on the clock."

"Fair point," Sirius aknowledged with a nod. "I threw a rock at a tree and when he went over to investigate the noise I pushed my wand into his back so no one would see the spell and stunned him."

So much for a feat of bravery beyond the keen of moral men.

"What was that wet thunk I heard then?" Harry inquired of his Godfather and got a thoughtless shrug in return.

"He fell on a rock." Sirius admitted, personally Harry felt it was more likely that his Godfather had made sure that the man had landed on a rock but honestly he didn't really care. Placing his hand up to his ear he flicked the microphone back on.

"This is Team 2, we're clear all three of our hostiles have been neutralised and sent to lock up." Harry stated waiting for orders, if they were going to go that house they were better off all doing it together. He looked down at his watch, peeling back his sleeve so he could see it easily. They had fifteen minutes before the Wards started acting the way they were supposed to again.

"Good job Team 2 wait for the others to sound off." Ameila Bones voice came back almost immediately. He and Sirius set themselves to watching the doorway, gun and wand firmly trained on it for anyone or anything dumb enough to walk in front. It hadn't taken long, less than five minutes later the other teams had called it in.

"Okay, Mad Eye tell me what you can see and the best way to approach this." Madam Bones ordered the senior Auror, the line was silent for a moment before Mad Eye answered in his typical gruff tone.

"The last four are still in the house, in the dining room, they appear to be playing cards. There's a single large window that two of them are facing as well as two other entrances. One from the front door, down the hall second door on your right. The other from the back door, we'll need to cut through the living room and we'll arrive behind them. Best approach as I can figure it is send two teams in through the front to draw attention while the other three take them out from behind, over." Moody answered bluntly, Harry thought about the plan for a second before speaking before Ameila could.

"Mad Eye can you tell me what the people at the table look like? Over." The dark haired Witcher asked seriously.

"One pretty boy while the other three are rather ugly really." Moody answered, he may not know why exactly he was asking, or maybe he did who knew really with Moody. But he answered quickly enough and that was the important part.

"Those three are probably Cynocephalus, their hearing will be amazing if you have use Alohomora to open the door there's a good chance they will hear it, over." Harry stated drawing a low groan from Sirius from next to him.

"I see," Amelia's voice came over the radio sounding somewhat pensive. "What would you advise then Witcher? Over." Well it looked like it was time to earn his pay again.

"While Cynocephalus do have enhanced sense it's also a weakness. I have a couple of flashbang grenades on me, someone chucks those through the window and we go in hard and fast. It'll most probably disorientate them enough to give us a decent enough advantage, over." Harry stated, the line went quiet for a second before Amelia spoke again.

"Okay if you're sure then we'll go with that plan, Teams Two and Four will go in through the front, everyone else will go in through the back. We start the attack in five minutes, no more radio contact to avoid alerting those inside, good luck, out." Ameila finished speaking and the microphone went dead. Harry checked his watch, nine minutes twelve seconds before the Wards would be back up, they were cutting this close.

He moved first staying low to the ground, carbine held out in front finger on the trigger. Now was the dangerous part, the part where they could get over confident and then get shot.

Letho was very clear on the fact this was the time most people screwed up and got shot.

It didn't take long to get to the door, his parents arrived less than a minute later. According to his watch they had three minutes, he could hear some laughter coming from the kitchen and pulled the grenades free. Turning to Sirius, Harry mimed pulling the pin counting to three and then throwing before shoving the pair of non-lethal explosives into his Godfathers hands and pointing at the window, Sirius nodded and moved off to get into position.

Harry turned back to his parents and gave them a quick once over. They didn't look all that different to the way they usually did at home, minus the kevlar vests over their bodies. Well that and the fact that his mother had used a charm to make her hair black, red kind of stood out in low light conditions. With the way they were looking at him he imagined that he probably looked very different to the way they remembered. The fact that both Lilly and James Potter had been giving him the same look before they left just compounded that feeling, though unlike before they were no longer so focused on either the sword strapped to his back or the carbine in his hands but rather his other equipment.

Harry looked to his watch, one minute remaining, he looked up and signalled to his parents before turning back to Sirius. His Godfather had his sleeve rolled up slightly checking his own watch, looking up the black haired man nodded once before looking back at the window he was crouching under and palming both grenades. Harry checked the safety on the AKS, he already knew it was off but it was more of a habit than anything, he did the same to Ivory and confirmed what he already knew about both, the safety was off.

He looked back at the watch, thirty seconds.

Harry moved away from the door, his mother backing up with him while James Potter took a position just off to the side wand ready, if he had to guess Harry would wager his father was likely about to hit the door with a blasting curse. Five seconds, Harry got Sirius attention and mimed throwing the grenade. His Godfather got the message and pulled the pin his arm pulling back for the throw.

"Now." The dark haired Witcher spoke calmly to his father.

"Bombarda Maxima." James Potter spoke the words at the same time that glass shattered as the thrown flashbang went straight through the window, the second one following suit immediately after. The doorway was reduced to splinters being blasted inwards by the dark blue light, the flashbangs went off half a second later, true to their name. His mother didn't wait running inside the second after the door had disappeared in the explosion.

Harry really wished she hadn't done that, he was the superhuman killing machine here. He was more resistant to damage than she was and anything minus the loss of a limb, eye or outright death was a quickly dealt with problem. Why anyone would run in before he did boggled the mind after all even if she was his mother...

Okay he had just answered his own question. His mother had run in before him because she didn't want him to get hurt, understandable but still tactically unsound. He was the better option to go in first, Harry processed these thoughts while sprinting after Lilly Potter, he could hear his father running behind him and the yells of pain and scramble towards weapons in the kitchen. His mother had made it before him but Harry was quickly at her side just in time to see a half transformed Cynocephalus leap at her. 

"Depulso," His mothers response to the leap was quick and concise a white light leaping from her wand and striking the Cynocephalus dead in the chest. It's momentum was quickly reversed, being sent flying in the other direction quickly enough that the brickwork it hit had a spider web of deep cracks form from the impact.

His mother had seen her first assailant and dealt with him well, it was the second one she had missed coming at her from the side. Fortunately it was well within Harry's line of sight, his mind quickly considered his options. AKS-74U, no he didn't know if his mother was about to step forward or not and that could get her killed if he fired at the wrong time. Ivory, to slow, he would need to drop the carbine and then draw, by that time the Cynocephalus would have made impact. Knife, same problem as Ivory, that left hand to hand as his best option.

Harry let the AKS drop from his hands, it would be caught by the strap anyway, and grabbed his mother by her shoulder pulling her back. His right leg came forward and slammed into the half transformed Cynocephalus' stomach pushing it back. From the corner of his eye he spotted Sirius stick his head in the window and send another assailant flying with a well placed banisher.

Harry jumped forward his left hand slamming into the Cynocephalus' fully formed muzzle with a powerful hook sending it off balance. The creature caught itself and pushed itself towards him, mouth wide open looking to take a bite. Harry stepped his left foot back and slammed his right arm down on its muzzle forcing it lower.

Fun fact about Cynocephalus, much like a dog their noses are extremely sensitive to both smells and pressure.

Harry's head came forward and gave a devastating headbut that landed straight on the end of the Cynocephalus' muzzle, hitting it square on the nose. His enemy yet out a yelp like a beaten cur, Harry's right fist came up and slammed into the base of it's jaw in a vicious uppercut before his knee made contact with its bollocks with a sickening thud. His left arm wrapped up under his enemy's arm pit while his right grabbed the front of the Cynocephalus', now quite ruined, shirt.

A quick twist and a hard pull, as well as shoving his hips just below his opponents centre of gravity turned the quick twist and hard pull into a rudimentary hip throw.

It should be noted that while the throw was indeed rudimentary and not performed particularly well at that it was still performed by a person with enough strength to lift over half a tonne if he need to. As such there was only one way that the Cynocephalus could possibly land given the above factor.

Hard.

His enemy landed back first Harry adjusted his grip before braking the Cynocephalus' right arm over his left leg with a sickening crack. Pulling his leg up the dark haired Witcher sent his boot thundering into the base of the Cynocephalus' jaw knocking it unconscious and turned his attention to the rest of the room, the other two were already down. The Aurors were making sure they would stay unconscious for the near future, with the exeption of his mother, who looked more than a little stunned at the level of brutality her child had just displayed and Tonks, who simply looked impressed. She expressed this with two simple words laced with awe, followed by seven that were actually somewhat expected.

"Holy shit, I wanna learn how to do that!" The Auror in training stated her hair running the gauntlet through several different colours as she did so. For Harry's part he just wanted to go home and get some rest.

It had been a long day.

 **Chapter Three- End**


	4. Chapter 4

**The Witcher**

 **Chapter Four: Indiana Jones Lied To You**

 **Authors Note- Start**

Despite the fact I decided to write this just to challenge myself, mostly because I wanted to see if I could write a chapter with mostly dialogue and still have it not be completely filler. I kind of feel like I succeeded actually.

This chapter is mostly about world building.

Now when I first started this story I threw in a couple of throw away references to the 2013 Tomb Raider game, by the way if you haven't played that then I do suggest you get on to it quick because it is worth every second you spend playing it.

Go watch The Angry Joe Review, that's honestly what sold the game to me.

The point I'm trying to get at is that I've decided to do something with that game in this and I want to take my time to get it integrated properly. So this chapter you get your first dose of Lara Croft and it's a big one.

Also I've got the next two to three chapters already planned out. Not sure when I will get to them but they are more about Harry using his brain rather than his brawn, which should be a nice change of pace. They will be murder mystery chapters and we'll get a bit more focus on Lilly, James, Sirius and Remus as well as some interactions.

Also this chapter would have been out yesterday but my computer crashed 5000 words in and took te whole document with it, let me tell you rewriting that was not fun. Though it was faster than writing it out the first time so silver lining.

Please enjoy.

 **Story Start-**

Harry James Potter truly felt like slamming his head onto the desk before him. If for no other reason than sheer boredom and frustration. But he refrained from that for two reasons, firstly it would be undignified and bring a lot of attention towards him. Secondly because he was in the University library and if he did do that there was a very good chance he would be thrown out. If he made enough of a scene they would probably not even let him back in. Considering how annoyed he was feeling there was a very good chance that would be the case if he allowed his frustration to get the better of him.

Harry had started to put some research into his idea on where Yamatai could be hidden, namely inside The Dragon's Triangle. Which also went by such lovely names as The Devil's Triangle and The Devil's Sea, really considering all the lovely names it really was a vacation hot spot just waiting to be exploited by corporations.

Really why could nothing ever be hidden in The Land of Tits and Wine, he would totally go there. Hell not only would he go there he would go there wearing the I Am The God Of Tits and Wine shirt that Sirius had given him last Christmas.

Television had corrupted that man.

Not that there was much left to corrupt mind you.

His main problem was the sheer size of the area he had to cover. The Devil's Sea had three so called 'Start Points', or at least that was how Harry saw them, the first was Miyake-Jima a small Island about one hundred kilometers to the south of Tokyo. The other two were the coast of Luzon, the largest Island in The Philippines and Guam a small Island south of Japan, a very, very long way south of Japan.

If one were to create a triangle using these three points as their reference then the perimeter of The Dragon's Triangle was seven thousand eight hundred kilometers. Worse the area of the Triangle was a little under three point two million kilometers. Which meant he had a lot of ground to cover if he wanted to get his research done and actually be taken seriously.

Which is what had led Harry to his current position, he had chosen a high perch. The second floor to be exact, a small alcove that let him see the vast majority of the library at will though it would be hard to see him in return. It was also a great place to be if a firefight broke out, okay the chances of that happening was slim to none but old habits died hard. It would allow him to see all of the entrances and exits, which was already an advantage.

The real plus however was the fact that any assailant would need to come up a single staircase in the middle of the room if they wanted to get to him, ensuring a decently sized kill zone since there was no cover on the stairs. Harry, thankfully, didn't have the same problem if he needed to get down, he'd easily survive the seven meter drop and due to his enhanced physiology it wouldn't even hurt. It would also mean he'd have another few shots lined up due to the way attacker would have to cross in order to get to the alcove.

A good place to sit no matter how you cut it as far as he was concerned.

That said it wasn't like the location was helping against his, close to all consuming, boredom. Harry's idea of using weather patterns to mark out where Yamatai could be. Looked like it may be baring fruit already, a promising sign. So far he'd been at this for three hours, the first hour was easy. All he'd needed to do was use his trusty macbook to investigate the biggest storms over The Dragon's Triangle in the last twenty years. That had been easy. He had checked the storms against The Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, Philippines and Guam Bureau's of Meteorology.

The most powerful and focused part of each storm had been close to the center of The Dragon's Triangle. In fact they all agreed that most, not all but at least eighty five percent, of the most powerful storms that ravaged the region over the last twenty years had close to the exact same focus point. A small, apparently completely island free, piece of water around two hundred kilometers to the east of the center of the triangle.

Finding that out had been the easy part, next had come the boredom.

In order to not be laughed off as an idiot, which could still happen even if he gathered all the data that he wanted. Harry needed to do a piece by piece search of all the data that the various Bureau's of Meteorology had collected. Yamatai had been noted as having quick and dangerous changes in weather, so he had to look over charts for abrupt changes in weather that happened seemingly at random.

He was starting from twenty years ago and already one part of his map, probably not coincidentally the same part as the focus points of most major storms, had dozens of confirmed hits of strange weather. Sudden storms that disappeared like magic, gale force winds from seemingly calm days along with almost unnatural hot and cold fronts that seemed to be generated by nothing.

The problem wasn't the data he was getting, it was the amount of data that Harry had to sort through. The Japanese Bureau at least had it's charts updated every thirty minutes, which meant he had go through forty two of them to view a whole day and three hundred, well almost three hundred. Two ninety four to be exact, in order to track a whole week.

Currently he was three and a half years in out of the twenty he wanted and Harry was already starting to feel that putting a bullet in his skull might just be the better idea than looking at another chart. However he chose to persevere instead of give up, after all this was what real archeology was all about. Sifting through data to find what you were looking for. Archeology, in reality, involved a lot of sitting still and working your way through mounds upon mounds of data, historical charts, anecdotes and legends to find what you were looking for.

In fact ninety nine percent of Archeology consisted of sitting down and doing mind numbingly boring things in order to find out just one interesting thing. The other one percent of the job was split three ways, point zero three was spent convincing people you were not crazy and actually knew what you were talking about. Zero point four was spent convincing those same people to give you money to go out and prove you were right, usually the most stressful step of all. Finally came the final zero point three percent which was made up of actually going and trying to find what you set out to look for.

In short kids.

Indiana Jones lied to you.

Harry really hated the ninety nine percent of the job that was the most important, well hate was probably to strong a word but he definitely disliked it. But since it was the most important part of the job he gave it his full attention, even though the bullet was looking mighty tempting. Clicking to the next page he reached out and grabbed another drawing pin, red for an unusual heat wave, and placed it into the map next to him, picking off a small sticky note to add the date to the pin.

His system was simple. Red was for heat, Blue was for cold, White was for storms, Green meant gale force winds and Yellow was for anything that didn't fit those categories. So far it was starting to look like he was going to need more red, blue, white and green pins before this was over. Maybe yellow as well but definitely the other four. He had brought one hundred of each colour, overkill Harry had thought originally, and his map at a small chart and maps store on the way in to London proper from Romford. He was already down to almost half his white pins and the others, minus yellow which was still two thirds full, were starting to get that way as well.

He was also going to need a new map, or several actually. Because Harry seriously doubted that he was going to be able to fit all of the pins on just two maps, twenty maps maybe but the way things were going two just was not going to cut it. Probably a thousand of each type of pin as well, hopefully he could get a discount for buying in bulk.

With a groan someone, well okay not someone Harry knew exactly who it was without even needing to look up from his laptop. Lara Croft had rather distinctive shampoo and her gait was different from Samantha Nishimura so he knew it was not the more talkative of the two, slumped into the chair across from him. Harry clicked on the next tab before looking up as the page loaded, his first impression of the day was that Lara Croft looked like hell.

Though she spent far more time around books than most and likely knew more about East Asian history, myth and legend then he would ever learn. Harry would easily concede that Lara Croft was a very fetching young woman. Not that he was interested in her like that, after all who wanted to date someone who you would have to constantly lie to about your family, job and history at all times?

Not Harry that was for sure.

He told enough lies on a weekly basis that he didn't want to add more on top by having a significant other that he lied to constantly as well. While Witchers in general weren't big on things like love Harry was one of the few he could say he knew Geralt or Rivia in any real capacity. Having trained with, in addition to being rather good friends, Cirilla, or Ciri as she preferred to be called.

Geralt's adopted daughter.

Though considering how similar they looked there were more than a few rumours going around that implied that, either through dealing with the Fae or another entity, Ciri could actually be Geralt's real daughter. Harry had never paid the rumours to much mind, mostly because there was no substance to them past the similar appearance of the two but Geralt had taught him one thing, though admittedly he had done so inadvertently.

While Harry wasn't even about to attempt to untangle the love triangle that was Geralt of Rivia, Yennefer of Vengerberg and Triss Merrigold, better men than he had tried and failed doing that. He was able to see a Witcher who had a relationship with two women, in whatever capacity they actually were to each other, and not have to lie about what he was or what he was doing and was loved anyway.

Harry didn't feel like he wanted a lot out of life for himself. But if there was one thing he did want it was a relationship where he didn't have to hide from the person he was dating. Which was why he was never going to be able to date a muggle, leaving the rather fetching pair of Lara Croft and Samantha Nishimura completely off his list of people he could date.

It was a **very** short list.

But while Lara was usually quite good looking, seemingly without even trying, today appeared to be the exception to the rule, probably much to the dismay of her fan club. Dark circles around her eyes, the brown orbs within looking listlessly out not really seeing all that much in front of her. Lara's chestnut hair which usually had a bright sheen to it was dull and listless, with more than a few split ends. Her nose was red and from what Harry could smell she also had a cold sweat, Lara Croft was sick.

It was probably nothing life threatening, after all not even Lara Croft would come into University if she was in actual danger of dying, well most likely anyway. She was the second most stubborn person Harry knew, and that was only if he counted himself. If Lara Croft was actually dying there was a part of Harry that suspected she would force herself out of whatever hospital bed she was in and come in to University Collage London just so she could die doing what she loved.

Archeology.

"You look like hell," Harry stated bluntly looking back down at his laptop and grabbing another blue pin, he was definitely going to need some more of those. Sticking it into the map just as Lara's eyes gained focus once more and looked at him.

"Good to know I look the same way that I feel." The slightly younger woman joked making her lips curl into a bare imitation of a grin. It made her look a little better but she still needed some bed rest and some cold medicine. Harry didn't get sick, his body was conditioned to resist every kind of natural malady that the world could throw at him, the magical however was another matter. But he'd been in her position before, building up a resistance to poison was never fun.

Doctor Harry recommended loads of Comedy Channel shows, notably South Park, and a couple of buckets of ice cream to get back on your feet.

"Seriously Lara go home and get some rest." Harry stated looking back down and clicking to the next page, still nothing. "You look like Jack Skellington, well if Jack Skellington was shorter and had been beaten with a cricket bat." He added in a completely serious tone, getting a small chuckle.

"Can't came in to help Dr Whitman, I'm done for the day but I've got a few things I want to look into." Lara replied causing Harry to shake his head, she should really go home she looked like hell and it was apparently going to rain later. From what Harry knew Lara didn't own a car either so she would get caught in a downpour knowing her luck and Murphy's Law.

As any good Witcher could tell you, Murphy's Law was King.

"Like what exactly?" He asked adding another pin to the map, white again, before scribbling the date onto a sticky note and adding slapping it to the pin. Returning his attention to the woman before him, who had rested her head on her arms and seemed to be refusing to move.

"I had an idea about Yamatai," Lara replied her head not leaving her arms. "I got it from the talk I helped him prepare for your lecture. How weather conditions could effect a dig site." She continued speaking but Harry already had a feeling that he knew exactly where this was going. Lara didn't seem to notice his sudden stillness and continued talking.

"In the legends that Sam told me Himiko was always credited with having vast Shamanistic powers." Harry's brain stopped for a second, legends that Sam told her? Why would Samantha Nishimura have knowledge of Yamatai legends? Not that Sam wasn't intelligent, she was willing to tell anyone who would listen about how she was top of her class and she was not joking about that. But Sam was a student of Cinematography last time he checked not Archeology.

"Wait, how does Sam know about Yamatai?" Harry voiced his question rather than try to work it out on his own, eyes flicking down to the screen, nothing. Lara seemed to stir slightly from her head down position on the desk, forcing herself up into a more upright position.

"Oh Sam never told you then?" She asked sounding honestly surprised. Harry wasn't quite sure how to point out that Sam and he were more casual acquaintances than friends, much like Lara and he. Sure they knew enough about each other to make small talk comfortable but he hadn't exactly sat down and picked her brains about ancient legends about Yamatai. Hell the fact Sam even knew legends about Yamatai was news to him.

"Sam is descended from Himiko. If her families history is accurate then they are direct decedents of her third daughter." Lara stated, Harry's mind stalled for a second. Well okay so Samantha Nishimura was a descendent of Sun Queen Himiko, the same Sun Queen that had apparently been extending her life through some kind of dark magic, good to know.

"She's actually the reason I started researching Yamatai in the first place." Lara continued talking not noticing that her audience was in a state of minor shock. "Sam was always so certain that Yamatai existed so I wanted to prove it to the rest of the world as well." The brown haired woman finished, seeming more alive than she had before.

"Anyway," Lara continued as Harry's brain fully rebooted and forced itself back into complete working order. "The idea that I had was quite simple, Yamatai according to legend had a variety of different weather patterns. This is attributed to Himiko controlling the weather using her Shamanistic power, but since we both know magic doesn't exist." Harry flicked his eyes back to his computer screen and added another pin to the map.

He did not want to look Lara in the eye when she said magic didn't exist. People said that the eyes were the windows to the soul for a reason. Most of it was simply waxing poetic but there was a very real grain of truth in that statement. If one was lying, or even simply concealing information, it was in the eyes that most people were likely see you that you were holding something back.

There were dozens of ways to tell someone was lying, eyes moving to much, eyes not moving at all, too much blinking, staring. That wasn't even going into vocal cues or body language, so he moved his eyes when she spoke about magic and made it look like he was simply working while they talked. Because the last thing Harry needed was for the woman before him to look into his eyes and get even the slightest inkling that the person she was across from was not quite human.

"So what I think is that in order to at least the semblance of Godhood." Harry didn't bother letting her finish, he already knew exactly where this was going.

"You think that Himiko had some highly accurate way of predicting the weather. The legends state that when she was roused to anger the sky stormed, when she was sad it wept, when she was calm so were the waters. So you think that since she couldn't control the weather, she had someway of predicting what it was going to be and then acted accordingly in order to achieve the facade of Godhood in the eyes of her subjects." Harry stated bluntly, checking another page, nothing. Lara looked a little stunned by his words before nodding slowly.

"Yes, that would explain where the legends of her power came from as well as why she could keep up a facade of Godhood. Especially since her people worshiped her as a living God, they would not have kept that up unless she had some way of making people acknowledge her powers. So the only scientific explanation that I can think of is that she had some way of accurately predicting what the weather would be on a given day and acted appropriately." She explained, eyes focused on his map. Particularly all the pins and dates that were attached to them.

"I had the same idea," Harry admitted smirking. "Welcome to what you'll look like three hours after you start. Bored out of your skull trying to manually find weather anomalies by trawling through the last twenty years of Meteorological data by hand." He stated, voice slipping into an emotionless tone as he mentioned his current job. "I think this may actually be the tenth circle of hell, you know the one that Dante missed when he took the grand tour." That got a small smile, more a mere twitching of the lips rather than a true smile. "Yes I've read a poem, try not to faint." Harry added, his voice still flat. That particular remark did get him a smile, in addition to a small chuckle. Lara definitely looked better when she was laughing, still looked sick as a dog but at least when she was laughing it appeared like she was having fun rather than simply waiting to die.

"So how far have you gotten?" Lara's voice took an excited quality as she looked down at his map taking careful note of every single pin. She did seem to be a little confused about why they were in The Dragon's Triangle though rather than The East China Sea where Yamatai should be located according to historical records. Harry figured he would get the more difficult news out of the way first, this was the part that he was going to need to sell other archeologists if he wanted to actually attempt to find The Lost Kingdom of Yamatai.

"Okay hard part first, I think Yamatai is in The Devil's Sea not The East China Sea." He stated, it was quick, blunt and to the point. Now would come the inevitable argument of historical fact verses what he had been able to dig up. Made worse by the fact that he couldn't exactly share his sources with others, Statute of Secrecy and all that.

"I do hate to point this out but there's a small problem with your theory." Lara stated slowly eyes roving over the map and pins therein. "According to all historical data that archeologists have been able to gather the maps that date back to a time when Yamatai was an active kingdom along with historical anecdotes and myth suggests that it was due south west of Kagoshima. Not due south east and heading out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean." She stated simply, Harry had been preparing to have this argument and thankfully historical data could actually back him up on more than a few of the idea's he was about to lay forth. Which was a good thing because it wasn't like he could just hand other archeologists a text book of Magical History and expect to be taken seriously.

Thankfully Yamatai's weather patterns were rather well described in the old texts so they would agree with his data and that, unfortunately would have to be enough. Besides no one had actually found Yamatai in The East China Sea so he had that going for him as well. It was going to have to be enough because without breaking The Statute of Secrecy he couldn't really give them anymore.

"Right but think about it, how many people have actually found Yamatai by looking in The East China Sea?" Harry asked, he didn't bother waiting for an answer. After all Yamatai was still called The Lost Kingdom for a reason and it wasn't just because the name sounded cool. Lara nodded slowly, she knew he had a point but was going to need more than that to be convinced, which was a good thing because it would be an excellent chance to practice his pitch.

"More importantly I decided to look into the weather patterns just the same way as you thought of doing. Yamatai, at least from what we know from the historical documents, had a very diverse climate with dozens of different weather conditions recorded with astonishing regularity." Harry stated before gesturing to his map as he added another white pin, he was going to need some more of those soon.

"Now The East China Sea doesn't have that kind of fluctuation in weather patterns, guess where does?" Harry said with a small smile, Lara looked down at the map and all of the pins that were scattered about The Dragon's Triangle along with the one part that was starting to hold a greater concentration than the rest.

"The Dragon's Triangle certainly has the right kind of weather that would match up with Yamatai's but then why would the maps be wrong?" Lara inquired, Harry honestly wasn't sure if she was asking because she wanted to hear his reasoning on the subject or was just trying to poke holes in his theory. Besides it didn't help that he didn't have a good answer to that question, adequate yes good no.

"Could have been a lot of things. From what we can tell from records of around that time their were a series of Tsunami's that hit Japan and the surrounding countries. Yamatai was recorded as being a series of Islands yet no one can find even one, my theory is that Yamatai was hit hard by those Tsunami's to the point where it's fleet and infrastructure was heavily damaged." Harry stated looking at the map once more, nothing.

"Considering that we also know that Yamatai was heavily militarised and were feared for that reason perhaps after the Tsunami hit them they were so reduced as to never be a threat again. We also know that the relationship between Himiko and The Emperor of the time was cold at best, maybe after those Tsunami's he had the maps and such changed so that no one could find Yamatai. With the damage done by the Tsunami chances are the kingdom would fade away anyway but with the changing of the documents in a few hundred years no one would even believe they existed when they couldn't find them." That was the theory that Harry planned on putting forth to others, they knew that the relationship between The Emperor and Himiko was on the verge of war, they knew that Tsunami's devastated that part of the world around the same time that Yamatai stopped turning up regularly in ancient texts.

So he was hoping that they wouldn't find his idea that The Emperor would attempt to completely erase Yamatai as anything but a memory not to be to far out of the park. Well at least Lara seemed to be considering the idea, she looked down at the map again.

"So do the weather patterns match up with what we know of historical documents?" She asked, well she was willing to entertain the idea that he could be right at least. Harry looked down at his map covered in pins and nodded.

"The red ones are for heatwaves, blue cold, white storms, green gale force winds and yellow anything that doesn't fit those categories." Harry stated, pointing to each pin in turn. "You'll notice that a lot of them seem to be here, a little east of the center of the triangle and with the frequency that they appear and change seems to be in line with what we know of Yamatai's weather." Harry stated bluntly, he wanted to sell this because he knew he was right!

"How many years worth of data is this and what are you looking for?" Lara asked her eyes staying riveted on the map taking in each pin and the date associated.

"Three years of data out of the last twenty gathered by The Japanese Bureau of Meteorology, I plan to go back twenty years then check the data against that recorded in The Philippines, Guam, China and Taiwan. As for what I'm looking for, weather anomalies that match what we know of Yamatai. Quickly forming storms that dissipate just as quickly, sudden hot and cold fronts and gale force winds that seemingly come up out of nowhere. So far most of them seem to be concentrated here, that seem a little strange to you? After all The Dragon's Triangle covers almost three point two million square kilometers, seems a bit strange that only this particular point has weather that matches up with what we know of Yamatai." Harry stated looking back to his screen and grabbing a green pin, adding it near the others and slapping the date on.

"That is a little strange," Lara allowed as a frown crossed her face. "But with only three years of data we can't really claim anything definitively yet." She added, Harry chose to zero in on a single part of that statement.

"Wait a second, we?" He inquired as Lara pulled out a laptop and map of her own, though unfortunately she lacked pins. That was a shame they would have come in handy, well maybe the shop under the Wilkins building would have some, Harry honestly couldn't remember if they stocked any. Under normal circumstances he would have questioned the map as well but this was Lara Croft and she practically lived and breathed all things Yamatai. Her having a map that focused on the areas of The East China Sea and went out in The Devil's Triangle was not surprising.

"Yes we," She stated while hitting a button on her laptop, Harry couldn't see which one but power stood to reason. "We both had the same idea and you've at least partially sold me on the idea of Yamatai being in The Dragon's Triangle." Lara stated looking down at all the different pins he had in the map before him. "I'll help you look into it, but only if you agree to help me do the same for The East China Sea just to make sure there aren't similar conditions out there." She put her conditions forth and Harry had no real problem with them.

After all this was a long job, lots of little things that he'd need to get done. If his payment for getting help was doing the same mapping job for The East China sea than sign him up, he knew Yamatai had moved so they weren't going to find the same weather patterns there. Meaning it would likely be a very short job all things considered.

"Deal," Harry replied snatching another white pin and placing it in the map.

"So red for heat, blue for cold, white for storms, green is gale force winds and yellow is anything that doesn't fit those categories. Your currently checking the Japanese Bureau of Meteorology, I haven't missed anything right?" Lara asked, her fingers typing quickly. Harry looked back up from his screen, another chart of nothing worth mentioning.

"Yeah that it," The dark haired Witcher replied looking at the next chart, still nothing. God where had this woman been three hours ago? Oh right working with the walking entity of ego and self importance that was Dr James Whitman.

All things considered Lara had probably suffered more than him today.

"Alright I'll start with the Philippines Bureau of Meteorology, I'll chart the worst storms first and their focal points, lets see if they match up." Lara stated looking down at her computer, Harry looked at his screen again, still nothing. Their silent work continued for a good five minutes, the only sound between them Lara adding a few white pins to her map and dating them. Harry still hadn't found a new anomaly to note, now he remembered why he was bored out of his skull earlier.

"You know," Lara's voice cut through the haze of boredom as Harry added another green pin to his map. "I just realised that was the longest conversation we've probably ever had." She stated looking a little sheepish. Harry decided not to say anything, how exactly did you respond to that? She was right and they both knew it. Not that it was anybodies fault, they were in different years and sharing of research books and websites didn't take much talking. Sending an e-mail with links was usually sufficient.

"It's kind of odd really we've known each other for a year but I still don't really know anything about you." Lara added, Harry took a deep breath. Were they really going to play twenty questions, did they absolutely have to? He hated lying to people all the time and talking about his past meant that he was going to have to do it.

"You want to have some sharing time then?" Harry said keeping his voice light and joking while he mentally assembled his lies. Oh well wasn't this just going to be fun and by fun he meant draining and tiring.

"Well it would make the work go faster." Lara replied. Just like that lying no longer seemed like such a bad thing anymore, twenty questions? Bring on two hundred thousand of them, just so long as it kept from from complete monotonous boredom. "Besides you can ask first if you'd like," She added with a small smile, it was such a shame Lara didn't know how many men would kill to be in his position right then. Because she probably would have found it funny, Harry certainly did.

"Okay, where did you go to school?" Harry figured he'd start with something easy, besides it would give him some time to think up other questions. Keep himself occupied while he was working and, on the note of work, he added another white pin to the map.

"I started boarding school at age ten went to Saint Peters in York." Lara answered her tone clipped, it was easy to tell that she wasn't paying full attention to the conversation. That was fine, neither was Harry but it was a good way to keep parts of his brain distracted and that was the important part. "Stayed in the dorms until age eighteen then applied to here, how about you?" The question didn't phase Harry in the slightest.

"Went to a small boarding school on the south coast of Wales called Evening Primrose, not the most manly of names I know. Started age ten and finished at eighteen then went traveling until I ended up back here a year ago." Harry replied, he was only partially lying as well. Evening Primrose existed and according to their records he had attended as well.

Evening Primrose was a boarding school that was built and paid for by Pure Bloods that actually cared about their Squib offspring and wanted them to do well in life. For a modest fee Witcher's were added to their roster, it didn't hurt that a Witcher got the equivalent education at The Academy so when they graduated Primary and Secondary School everyone still alive also got a certificate saying they had done so at Evening Primrose.

After all it wasn't like he could just waltz in to U.C.L and say he wanted to attend, he did actually need what amounted to a formalised education before that. English, Maths, Science, Social Studies and plenty of Physical Education oh yes The Witcher Acadmey offered it all and all at the low, low price of your humanity and an almost invariably gruesome death at a later date.

"Never heard of it before," Lara remarked her voice showing she was still more absorbed in her work.

"Like I said it's a small place, what clubs were you in?" Harry inquired, all boarding schools had clubs just a matter of what ones. Another red pin joined the other, he was starting to get very, very low on white Harry noted as he turned back to his laptop.

"Shooting and Gymnastics," Lara replied adding another white pin to her map. Well there was a surprise, gymnastics he could accept easily enough. But a bookworm like Lara Croft also did shooting, well he would admit to not seeing that one coming.

"Any good?" Harry asked, he was kind of interested in just how good a shooter Lara Croft actually was. The gymnastics he didn't really care about, combat was something he'd been trained for though so he could appreciate a good shooter more than he could appreciate a gymnast. He lacked the breadth of experience necessary to appreciate gymnastics, though he was quite good at Parkour. The ability to navigate terrain quickly and in unexpected ways could be a boon in his business after all.

"Competed on a national level for both," Lara replied as another white pin met her map, her eyes not even once straying from her laptop. Harry with the amount of focus she had on her work he was half considering asking about her and Sam's sex life because Harry was halfway convinced he could get away with it. Besides the rumour that Lara Croft and Samantha Nishimura were an item had been floating around since before he'd gotten to U.C.L maybe it would be a chance to find out if there was anything more to those rumours than speculation.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, good sense won out over curiosity.

"What kind of clubs were you in?" Lara asked, Harry didn't have to think twice about his answer. After all he simply had to pick the skills that she would most likely see from him and then give her a way to explain them away.

"Martial Arts and Parkour." He answered as another blue pin joined all the others. That seemed to get a small reaction as his companion stiffened in her seat.

"Really what martial arts?" Lara inquired, for the first time since the conversation had begun she seemed to be paying more attention to it than the work. Harry took half a second to work out what to say, after all the answer 'a specialised blend' probably didn't quite give the answer she was looking for.

"Jiu-Jitsu, traditional not Brazilian, and some Muay Thai." Harry replied, that way if she ever saw him hit someone he could explain away how he knew how to fight. The chances of that happening were slim to none but it paid to be prepared. "I'm about average, never competed." He could hear the first drops of rain starting to come down, wouldn't be long before it became a decent sized shower. He hadn't checked the weather forecast, maybe it would even turn into a storm.

"Huh, learn something new everyday." Lara replied as she went quiet and the two of them started to work in silence, Harry felt his boredom start to rise again before ruthlessly pushing it down. As much as he may have liked taking his thoughts away from boredom lies had a habit of coming down around you if you spent to much time around someone.

The less lies you told around a person the easier it was to keep them believing the false facts you had fed them.

Harry placed another white pin, he was down to his last twenty, he was going to need more soon, very soon. He could hear the rain begin to pick up, all he needed to do in order to stave off the boredom was just keep working and listen to the rain.

Harry lasted a little under five minutes.

"So what did Whitman want you for anyway?" He asked, eyes on his screen as a green pin disappeared from the stacks between them and onto Lara's map. The brown haired woman looked up at him for a seconding before going back to her computer.

"Dr. Whitman needed some help doing research on Yamatai." She responded fingers typing away. Harry's brain stopped for a second, since when exactly had Whitman cared about Yamatai? All of the man's experience was geared towards South American and European history. Hell Whitman had admitted that in their first day of class stating that East Asian History was not something he particularly enjoyed and had instead focused on South America and Europe.

Why the sudden change in policy?

"He's even considering making Yamatai the subject of the next season of Whitman's World. He said something about the ratings being great if they followed archeologists as they worked. Besides that I think he liked a few of my theories, he wanted to take a better look at them and I came in to show him and explain a few of the finer points, though if you're right this could help a lot as well." Okay that made a whole lot more sense. From what Harry had seen of Doctor James Whitman the man was either an Egotist or a Narcissist, he couldn't tell which. As a matter of fact they were both rather similar, an Egotist had the inability to care about others while a Narcissist could care but chooses not to and that was a very important difference.

Harry wouldn't be able to tell which Whitman was for sure unless he was able to sit in on a counseling session for the man. But from what he'd seen Harry would be willing to put money on Whitman being a Narcissist. Whitman was obsessed with his own self image and always being in the spotlight, the fact he made Whitman's World required viewing for his course pointed that out quite well. They used textbooks that he wrote and mostly drew from his theories, he didn't want to share the spotlight with anyone else, another sign of a Narcissist.

What could possibly give him a better spotlight than finding a Lost Kingdom?

Nothing that Harry could think of off of the top of his head. Suddenly he was interested in Yamatai and wanted to 'look over' Lara's theories, he really didn't like this at all. If Harry had to guess than his guess was that Whitman was using Lara for her theories and planned to take credit for the find and leave out her contribution if everything panned out in his favour.

"He even said that I could come along as a helper if he can convince the network to sign off on the next season being a hunt for Yamatai." Lara continued not knowing of Harry's thoughts on the matter of her possibly soon to be boss. He wanted Lara to come along as a 'helper' Harry was translating that to mean he wanted Lara to come along and do all of the actual archeological work to find Yamatai then swoop in to steal the glory.

Maybe he was just cynical but Harry had seen the worst side of humanity, and those who lived beside it, for to long to have any positive feelings towards someone like Doctor James Whitman. Maybe Lara was right and he was wrong, but somehow Harry couldn't believe that was the case. He wanted to believe that everyone, even James Whitman, had a better nature but he simply could not.

Because he knew better.

"Try to get me a place on that expedition as well if this ends up helping you." Harry stated adding another blue pin to his map, he was going to need to buy another map tomorrow in addition to more pins. "If you actually do find Yamatai I want to be there for it." After all if he helped to narrow down the search area then he wanted to be there when they found it. Also he'd probably take some kind of camera with him, make sure he took some of his own video while they were out. If Whitman wanted to try and take the prestige for the find he was welcome to try. Lets see how well that worked out for him when there was video evidence showing it was Lara's work instead and some of his own.

Harry chose not to practice self delusion, it tended to get in the way of getting actual work done. Lara's findings over the last three years would be worth more than his own, partially because he couldn't list all of his sources. If they found Yamatai she would get most of the acclaim for that act and that was just fine by him Lara could have the acclaim that rediscovering The Lost Kingdom brought.

Harry felt just fine about settling for the money instead.

"Seriously you want to come on that expedition? I thought you hated Doctor Whitman." Harry shrugged, it was more dislike than hate and he told her as much.

"Hate is a strong word, dislike is closer to the truth. I just don't like his attitude. But in answer to your question yes I would like to be part of the expedition. If I have to sit here for what is probably going to be the better part of the next two months working on these maps then I want to be there for the pay off, that to much to ask?" He inquired while placing another white pin in the map, down to his last ten.

"Okay I'll tell you what if this little research project pays off and you help me look into The East China Sea then I promise I will do everything I can to get you on that expedition." Lara stated with a smile while holding her hand out, Harry grasped her hand in his own firmly.

"Deal," He agreed giving a firm handshake as he looked back to the charts in front of him, nothing. Dear sweet God in heaven he hated this part of the job, knowing that he could only put off the onset of boredom for so long Harry resorted once more to talking.

"So any plans for tonight?" He asked flicking to the next page of the website, still nothing. Lara looked up from her own work as the rain stated to come down a little harder. She probably thought he was trying to hit on her, not that Harry blamed her if she wasn't a muggle he probably would have been hitting on her.

"No nothing for tonight, just going to go home and sleep this cold off." She responded whipping her nose with a tissue from her bag, it quickly went into the bin at the end of the table. "Got two late shifts at The Nine Bells near the docks over the weekend so no fun there either I'm afraid." Harry couldn't help but chuckle it was almost like she was trying to ward him off of trying something, the statement was quite clear Not Free Tonight Or This Weekend.

"Well know how that feels got a late shift at The Crown tonight not sure if they'll need me over the weekend, eh either way should be a fun time." Harry responded, he actually liked working in a bar. It didn't beat being a Witcher but it was a hell of a lot less dangerous and he got to meet different and interesting people, usually he got to hit them later as well it was a big plus. They usually attracted sailors and the like to come in and have a drink after they'd just gotten off one of the cargo ships, which meant they got a fair few fights going on. When he was close enough to get involved Harry usually cracked a couple of skulls to restore order and because he liked hitting loud mouthed arseholes.

"The Crown?" Lara inquired eyes flicking up from her laptop for a second as she did so.

"Yeah small pub out near the docks, sailors and the like mostly." He stated, picking up one of the last four white pins and adding it to the map before him. "Sometimes we get a few rowdy ones, sometimes I have the displeasure of having to throw them out." Harry stated solemnly, the grin his was wearing completely ruining his words and making Lara let out a very unladylike like snort.

"I'm sure you find throwing them out to be a monumental task that no one else can perform." She teased lightly making a small smirk curl Harry's lips.

"Well it's a hard job but someone has to do it, may as well be me. For who else could possibly bare that burden!?" He stated while waving his arms grandiosely and giving a small chuckle.

"You a waiter or a bartender?" Lara asked, he could hear the professional curiosity in her voice.

"Both, whatever they need me to be on the night, you?" Harry asked in return.

"The same, whatever they need me to be I am. Waitress, Bartender, Paramedic and occasional Janitor Lara Croft at your service." She told him with a mock salute making Harry chuckle.

"Half an hour to closing." A voice echoed out throughout the library, Harry's eyes flicked down to the time at the corner of his laptop, yep it was eighteen thirty alright. Clicking the next button one more time Harry grabbed the second to last white pin and added it to his map, Lara picking up the final pin and doing the same the moment after.

Now was the simple part, for lack of a better term.

They placed their things away in silence. Both only stopping to get detailed photographs of their maps so they could reconstruct them later and wouldn't that be fun!

Note the sarcasm in the last part of that sentence.

Harry slipped the remaining pins, of which there were not many, back into their holders and into his bag. He could do more work at home if he felt like it but he probably wouldn't his shift started at nine and he would rather have a shower and lie down for a bit first. They walked from the library in silence while Harry pulled his car keys from his pocket. Like most days he'd parked far from the entrance, there was no denying that he was going to be soaked on the way back.

Joy.

He saw Lara looking at him out of the corner of her eyes and slowed down slightly instead of pulling away like he had been about to. Green eyes quickly found the umbrella in her hand, well wouldn't it have been handy if he'd had one of those when he left home today, oh well these things happened. Besides he had a feeling that he knew what was about to be asked of him and if it was what he thought it was then he could benefit as well.

"Look it's raining out and I don't really feel like walking home under the umbrella, you think you can give me a lift back to my place?" Lara's voice cut in just as Harry had been expecting and, channeling Sirius, a dangerous prospect on a good day. But thankfully doing that gave him the perfect response for that line.

"Why Miss Croft." He said sounding affronted and placing a hand on his chest as if wounded. "Asking me to your house already, I shall have you know that I require at least dinner and a movie first." Harry finished as bombastically as possible leaving Lara looking slightly stunned by the abrupt change in pace before she slapped him across the arm, Harry would give her this much. Girl had a hell of a right arm on her.

"That's not what I meant at all and you know it you bastard." She replied, though the words lacked any real heat. Harry just chuckled and then angled for the one thing he wanted out of the entire conversation.

"Sure I can give you a lift on one condition." He stated bluntly.

"What?" Lara asked sounding wary, green eyes zeroed in on his target.

"You share that umbrella."

Harry wished he had a camera, her face was priceless.

 **Chapter Four- End.**


End file.
